HR Technology Discussion Board

Best of 2006

2007-01-01T21:13:00.000-08:00

This is the list of 2006 articles that was most read on systematicHR.com. Thanks for your readership and I look forward to another year.

1. Sleepless Nights in HR parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

2. The Wrong HR Silos

3. HR Function Commoditization - The Future of HR

4. Hewitt’s Lessons Learned

5. PS vs SAP parts 1, 2

6. Independent Consulting: Perception or Reality?

7. Oracle versus SAP - 2008

8. The #1 and 2 Factors for Successful HRMS Implementation

9. Vendor or Client: Who’s Fault is it?

10. Talent Series: The Rules of Talent; On Talent and Engagement; Building Talent; What Does Talent Want?

Moved to systematicHR.com

2005-12-30T16:33:00.000-08:00

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Double Dubs

My Top 10 Most Viewed Posts in 2005

2005-12-28T11:07:00.000-08:00

I lied - one more post.

Ok - so I've only been around since March. Who cares? It staggers me to think about everything we've covered. From employer branding, engagement, onboarding, technology, vendors, strategies, and just good 'ol news. I've enjoyed blogging, getting to know many of you, and learning from you as well. I hope you've enjoyed it too.

My apologies - I lost all comments when I converted to the new domain. As a side note - I'd love it if more of you would comment back on my posts. It's a great way for everyone to pick up different points of view. I know you're out there, but I get way more e-mails than comments. Go figure.

Here are my 10 most popular posts as voted on by you:

Talent optimization and engagement

Branding, Communications, Service Delivery

Onboarding Part 1: Definition

Workforce Planning again - The Definition

Oracle Fusion, and future PeopleSoft functionality

Recruiting to Onboarding

eRecruitment Market Trends

Onboarding Part 2: Integration

Employer branding, talent and engagement Part 1

SuccessFactors TMS review

2006 HR Technology Outlook – last post of 2005

2005-12-28T11:05:00.000-08:00

As my last post of the year, I was going to do the standard year end list. But then I thought better and rather than putting in time that very few people are going to read, I thought I’d drag out a rather old article on the HR tech outlook for HR technology. As usual, I’m opinionated, I disagree, and I’m willing to write about it.

But first, another usual item from me – the disclaimer: I’m in agreement with most if this article.
Observation 1:
HR technology applications will continue to expand, with a strong emphasis on recruiting, staffing, scheduling and employee performance management.(from Miller, Mark, September 5, 2005. “Outlook for 2006 Technology,” BCSolutionsmag.com. Retrieved December 8, 2005 from http://www.hr.com. )

Ok – I’ll go with that. Basically this is a continued expansion of the TAS (talent acquisition), TMS (talent management) and TLM (timekeeping) suites. No brainer here.

Observations 2 and 3:
Vendors seek to expand market penetration and their software offerings for HR applications.

Ok – I’ll go with this one too. We’ve already seen it with the large TMS vendors expanding their offerings in 2004 and ’05. No doubts this will continue.
Observations 4 and 5:
HRO becomes mainstream and almost a necessity. Vendor consolidation in the HRO space will taper off in 2006.

I reject the first point. In the last 10 years, there have been fewer than 100 HRO deals going live. It costs too much, is too hard to implement well. I’m going out on a limb and saying that by 2010, we’ll still have fewer than 1000 HRO deals.

I accept the second point. There simply isn’t much to consolidate any more. My post last week on a potential buyer for ACS doesn't count since it's not a merger between BPO organizations.
Newly formed entities such as ExcellerateHRO, ACS/Mellon, will join the global giants IBM, Hewitt/Exult and Fidelity in offering one-stop end to end HRO services using either ERP applications from SAP, PeopleSoft or Oracle, or their own home-grown HRMS. This is supported by onshore or offshore call/support centers and strong case management capabilities.
ADP, Accenture, Convergys, Arinso and Aon will continue to focus on mid- to global-market solutions.

I reject the text above. Accenture is certainly not a mid market HRO vendor even though I’ve been the one saying they are trying to break into the mid market space. All their deals to date have been huge. Convergys is also not a mid market player and I’m not sure they want to be yet. On the other hand, I’m not sure Fidelity is a “global giant” and ExcellerateHRO is unproven.
PEOs will start to gain a foothold in HRO as well. Vendors like Administaff, Gevity, and Checkpoint HR will make some noise in 2006.

I reject the text above. I’ve talked about the differences between HRO and PEO’s before. Let’s not compare the two. It’s like saying the horse-and-buggy are getting into the NASCAR market.
Observations 6 and 7:
HRT spend will increase. Money will be earmarked for purchasing applications providing metrics and other measurements which will help HR executives gain strategic impact.

For those of you who know what I do and who I am, you know I’m kinda counting on this happening. But hey – we say HRT spending will increase ever year, don’t we?

Observation 8:
Off-shoring initiatives in U.S.-based companies will hit a culture barrier. Eastern European countries, though, will gain favor as an offshore site for IT support.

I actually think this is nonsense. The American economy is on the upswing and we are usually more accepting of things like observation 8. I think we’ll see more off shoring in 2006 with steady growth until the next economic downturn. In my opinion, off shoring has been growing for years with little to no resistance.
Observation 9:
Privacy concerns along with other Web communications standards will gain visibility.

No comment – not really my area.
Observation 10:
The “Web Services” era of software applications begins to take shape.
The concept of a pay as go, pay for what you use software application model first adapted by the likes of Salesforce.com will move into HR technology in 2006. With a user interface modeled on Amazon.com and a search engine approaching Google-like capabilities, this approach will incorporate technologies under the heading of “Web Services.” Using Java script, limited tables and having endless adaptability, new software will emerge. Already some niche providers are taking this approach. In Workforce management, year-old Hoursdoc.com uses this technology.

Hmmm… not sure about this one… Funny thing is that I’ve already written my first 4 posts for next year, and it all revolves around web services. His observation is right on until you start reading the detail. I’m not sure he knows what web services is. At the very least, it is not dependent on on-demand software.

Industry pioneer Dave Duffield, the co-founder of PeopleSoft, is now actively using this technology to build a new ERP platform. During 2006 we should see his group’s early efforts attract a very visible beta client. This is guaranteed to raise the excitement level in HR Technology as Mr. Duffield’s first application has historically been in HR.

I can’t fault him for this paragraph. It would have been my assumption too. When I first saw that payroll was on the list, I assumed HR was as well (even though I didn’t see it). I have it from a good source that HR is not in the first release. Oh yeah – We’ve known the company was going to be called workday for months. We've been talking about workday.com here for months.

Hey – any day I only get on someone for 30% of their comments is a good day. We’ll call it a present for the holiday season. Everyone have a great year end, and we’ll see you in 2006.

ACS for sale - $8B

2005-12-28T11:04:00.000-08:00

Ok - I'm trying to not post at the end of the year, but this is news worth posting.

A consortium of investment firms is in talks to acquire Affiliated Computer Services, a technology outsourcing company with clients that include General Electric and McDonald's, for about $8 billion, people briefed on the negotiations said.

The group is led by the Texas Pacific Group and includes Bain Capital and the Blackstone Group, these people said. Silver Lake Partners had been part of the group, these people said, but recently dropped out.

Under the terms of the proposed deal, the consortium would pay about $62 a share for Affliated, which before yesterday's run up in its stock price, would have been a premium of about 15 percent. (from New York Times, December 23, 2005. "$8 Billion Deal Said to Be in Works for Tech Company." Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com)

Improving the Quality of Communications - Part 2

2005-12-22T11:09:00.000-08:00

View part 1 here.

Jason wrote this post about The Manager's Role in PerformanceCorsello, Jason, December 19, 2005. "The Manager's Role in Performance." Retrieved from http://jasoncorsello.blogs.com on December 19, 2005. a couple days ago. Seemed to fit into this topic very well and it's his fault this turned into a 2 day post. In it he refers to an HCI/RecruitMax whitepaper that I have excerpted below:

Jason Corsello, Senior Analyst at The Yankee Group, believes that performance management is mainly about aligning business goals with individual objectives. He maintains that, “the one reason performance management has not taken off in a significant way among line managers is the absence in the past of good tools and technology.” Past tools and processes, says Corsello, “have had a negative impact on line mangers in terms of pushing them away from performance management initiatives.” Now companies have a wide variety of tools apart from appraisal tools – such as goal alignment and succession planning – that they can choose from in order to leverage technology in a better way. “If the companies keep in mind the needs of line managers while shopping for solutions and then motivate them to use them, it will not be difficult to get line mangers to fall in line.” Advises Corsello.

The panel agrees that alignment issues are the most important for line managers in performance management. Managers must be able to see their goals and the goals of their team within the bigger picture of the organization and they must understand how they will be measured against achieving those goals.Human Capital Institute, November 11, 2005. "On The Line: The Manager's Role In Performance." Retrieved from http://www.workinfo.com on December 19, 2005.

At the end of my last post, I lamented that systems are not the end solution of our communication problems. Jason's post helped bring me back to the technological optimist that I usually am. In this briefing, Jason does a wonderful job of explaining in a few words what all of these systems do when combined into a cohesive toolset. In this specific example, performance is nothing without good succession planning, competency management, goal routing, and learning management. And of course, let's not forget a good compensation plan that is tightly integrated with performance.

These disparate tools combine into an incredibly effective employee management package when utilized in an integrated and systematic way.

However, I will go back to my last post and note once again that systems are not the end solution. However, these systems bring to bear the full understanding of a particular employee's situation and how we as HR or managers can guide the employee into increased engagement, effectiveness and productivity. I'm not going to let go of the fact that the systems can't make your managers communicate effectively. However, the smart manager is inundated with direction that she didn't have just a few years ago.

As a final note, I found this blog on employee engagement. The latest post is on communications and market value and the top value additive from a 4 year Watson Wyatt study is dirving manager's behavior. Sorry, I don't have the WWW reference.Hannegan, Christopher, December 20, 2005. "Proving link between employee communications and market value." Retrieved from http://www.edelman.com on December 20, 2005.

Improving the Quality of Communications - Part 1

2005-12-22T11:08:00.000-08:00

Employee Engagement at 14% Worldwide

Actually, I'll place a healthy bet that all bloggers and almost all blog readers are highly engaged. Let's face it, for you to search out pages like this one instead of SHRM.com takes some effort. But on to the point:

Towers Perrin recently completed what is arguably the broadest survey on employee engagement. Towers Perrin, November 15, 2005. “ Largest Single Study of the Workforce Worldwide Shows That Employee Engagement Levels Pose a Threat to Corporate Performance Globally.“ Retrieved December 11, 2005 from http://www.towersperrin.com. Results were released last month with the following highlights:

84% of highly engaged employees believe they can positively impact the quality of their company’s products, compared with 31% of the disengaged.

72% of the highly engaged believe they can positively affect customer service, versus 27% of the disengaged.

68% of the highly engaged believe they can positively impact costs in their job or unit, versus 19% of the disengaged.ibid

Anita Bruzzese and Julie Gebauer from Towers Perrin have yet another definition for engagement:

Are you willing to go the extra mile for your employer? Are you so highly committed to seeing that your company does well that you'll put in whatever extra effort is required? ... ''Fully engaged employees have the desire and the capability and are willing to put in discretionary effort for their employer,'' says Julie Gebauer with Towers Perrin, a human resources company that conducted the study. ''In other words, they're willing to go above and beyond the call of duty.''Anita Bruzzese, December 17, 2005. "Businesses must engage workers to meet goals," The Salt Lake Tribune.

I have also seen a quote from David Ulrich where he uses the same language about "discretionary" work to define engagement. Can't find a reference though.

''Clearly, employees want and need more from senior management,'' says Gebauer, managing director and leader of Tower Perrin's Workforce Effectiveness practice. ''Managers have got to be more visible, more accessible and more open to employees. Leaders have got to understand what makes employees click.''ibid

I'm not going to comment on some of the distinct country statistics as I don't know anything about cultural effects on surveys like this. For example, some Asian populations measured very low on the engagement scale. Are they actually engaged and don't answer the questions the same way, or do they all hate their jobs, but stay because you used to get lifetime job security in places like Japan? I have no idea.

Clearly how one engages an employee will differ with each culture and country. The important point is that engagement is indeed critical to the bottom line and organizational success. What is important to me is that I talk a lot about technology and how these implementations increase your ability to improve the relationship with your customers (employees). However, if your managers are utilizing the automation and spending less face time with employees, this is a serious mistake.

Employees do want to contribute more, but believe they are hampered by senior managers. Only 41 percent believe bosses support new ideas and new ways of doing things, while only 36 percent believe top brass effectively communicates the reasons for important business decisions. Only one-third of workers believe senior managers communicate openly and honestly. ibid

So employee portals and self service are great because nether we nor our employees want to spend time on a manual address change process. However, we need not to think about minimizing the interaction - but to increase the quality of that interaction.

Part to of this series tomorrow.

Related Posts:

GG and DD define “engagement”

Employer branding, talent and engagement Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

Talent optimization and engagement

Commitment vs. Engagement

Mergers and 20 dumb things...

2005-12-20T18:41:00.000-08:00

Listen, I can go off topic sometimes, right?

Gautam's post on Tom Peter's 20 dumbest business practices reminded me of something else I read recently:

TP: Mergers of Decrepit Monsters!

GG: Merging for the heck of it!

SA: More Often Than Not, Massive Galaxies Form by Mergers

New data seem to show that galaxies collide all the time. In fact, the oldest and largest galaxies in the universe most likely formed from such intergalactic combinations.

"Our study found these common massive galaxies do form by mergers," Van Dokkum explains. "It is just that the mergers happen quickly and the features that reveal the mergers are very faint and therefore difficult to detect."

"Quickly" on a galactic scale means just a few hundred million years--a small fraction of the 13.7 billion years the universe has been in existence--and, because such collisions rarely involve head-to-head star crashes, they leave few traces behind except in the shape of the resulting galaxy and a general slowing in its formation of new stars.Biello, David, December 6, 2005. " More Often Than Not, Massive Galaxies Form by Mergers," Scientific American. Retrieved from www.sciam.com on December 19, 2005.

Some strange parallel universe stuff going on here (no pun intended).

Yeah - this is what I read when not reading HR stuff. Sad, huh? So GG and Tom Peters make me think of massive galaxies? hmm....

ADP's On-Demand HRMS Direction

2005-12-20T18:40:00.000-08:00

I saw this press release and got to thinking about ADP's direction with HRMS. Why do I keep talking about ADP and why are they important? Being the 10,000 lb. gorilla in the payroll market, they are actually also one of the huge players in the core HRMS market as well. They have more HRMS installations in the mid-large employer market than anyone other than PeopleSoft/Oracle. PeopleSoft was the most installed HRMS and ADP Enterprise came in at #2 (please note I am not including PCPW and PayForce - it's pure ADP Enterprise).

As ADP attempts to turn into more of a on-demand company (like workday, salesforce and successfactors), they are held back by technology and legacy customers.

Technology is a huge hurdle at ADP - not that they don't have it, they do and are good at it. If you don't believe me, then you should because there's a great chance they process your stock transactions. Their HR services have grown so fast in the last 6-7 years that the technology infrastructure is almost impossible to keep up with. Acquisitions in all 3 major areas (HR, PR, Benefits) have added systems, service centers, etc. This has also mean different code bases that needed integration and bringing them up to single standards.

As of this year, ADP is close. They have fantastic web services technology that lets you subscribe to a portal with on-demand basic employee self service, check-view, MSS performance reviews, MSS compensation reviews, time and attendance, benefit enrollments. All of this is fully integrated into a single portal experience so the employee or manager only logs in once (we're going to talk a lot more about web services in January). So anyway, they are gaining lots of ground on the technology side. The only problem, which may not really be a problem, is that to get their hosted-only portal, you have to host every service you subscribe to - HRMS, Time, Benefits...

Then there's the second problem. "Legacy" customers. The ones on premise (non-hosted) HRMS. As of the current version, ADP doesn't even offer self service tools anymore - they assume you will host and use their portal. We now go back to the "2nd largest provider of HRMS" story. They have at least 5-700 non-hosted clients IMO. In several years, they will have to convert to ADP hosting, or they will be out looking for a new HRMS that has native ESS/MSS. Or option number 3 - go buy something off the shelf. Until this press release I didn't know anything was out there for non-hosted ADP clients. From what I hear, it's a pretty nifty little product. Considering that ADP Enterprise has over 1000 installs currently in live production, it's nice this large user base has another option.

TAS Vendor Scorecard

2005-12-19T09:33:00.000-08:00

Well, I've done talent management scorecards a few times, but never talent acquisition. This is not really a scorecard or vendor functionality comparison. Here are my top 4 vendors and a few notes about them. This is not a review of functionality, just a purely subjective view on who I like and why.

Taleo and Virtual Edge were really a tie with Taleo coming in stronger on the app side, but I'm more excited about watching Virtual Edge right now. Taleo has a slight margin on the functionality side with absurd amounts of flexibility for the end users (managers and recruiters). Virtual Edge is much better in technology architecture. Basically this means easier deployment of web services and accessible API's (if that means anything to you). We'll see if Taleo can pull through some promised technology in their next release. If they don't VE will easily dominate the market - not having web services in 2005 is sinful. Not having it in 2006 is unforgivable.

1) Taleo: Slowed down their R&D processes while preparing for IPO. Still the leader with Virtual Edge creeping up.

1) Virtual Edge: Good technology creeping up on Taleo. This is probably the company to watch and is really the biggest competition for Taleo in the near future.

3) RecruitMax: Poor infrastructure. Installations for each client are separate instances. This is very difficult to manage and support for upgrades and service. Next release of software is supposed to support multi-tenet architecture

4) Brassring: Starting to become a serious mid market play. They are not driving in toward the large employer space. Could not capitalize on early market excitement.

TMS (non) fiancials

2005-12-17T13:26:00.000-08:00

I seem to have made the quite unwise statement that I would attempt to evaluate the financials of several TMS vendors. Realizing now that I should take that statement back (entirely possible with just a quick stroke of the keyboard) and deny the whole thing, I submit the following with a few disclaimers (on top of my normal disclaimers):
1. Any and all analysis performed for this post is almost pure conjecture.
2. While I reviewed a few sources of financial data, and have made some pretty reasonable calculations and guesses, many of these calculations were based on educated guesses.
3. I actually have crunched numbers and came up with a few comparisons of profitability, revenues, total clients, total employees. I will not post these numbers since I could be so far off it would be misleading.
4. I have decided to look only at Authoria, RecruitMax, and SuccessFactors. These are private companies and difficult to get data for. For WorkStream, please visit their website here to download the annual report. It’s simply not fair to evaluate WS against “educated guesses.”
5. I have not been involved in a TMS search in the last couple quarters, and don’t have any direct information other than what is on the public internet.

Key Points:
– SuccesFactors seems to be adding clients faster than anyone else.
– Authoria seems to have the strongest base in the Fortune 1000. SuccessFactors is a very close second.
– RecruitMax may not be profitable (I don't know for sure), but is also adding clients as a fast pace. Their average clients size seems to be smaller than Authoria or SuccessFactors.
– Authoria and RecruitMax have more users that SuccessFactors, but it is impossible to tell what product those users are on. For example, my numbers for Authoria may include non-TMS products. However, I have reasonable confidence that Authoria has the most TMS employee subscriptions. RecruitMax has a pure TAS base.
– As SuccessFactor’s client base is 100% subscription based on employee headcount, each employee added is much more significant to the bottom line than for Authoria or RecruitMax.

Profitability:
– Success Factors has been profitable since inception in 2001. I’m not sure if they have ever taken a loss if you exclude cash infusions of about $5M/year. However, this is chump change and I’d guess that they have been turning real profits. I really can’t figure out how they have been cash flow positive since inception.
– Authoria turned a profit in FY’04. They state that they are on course to turn a profit in FY’05 as well. Obviously I don’t know how the acquisition of hire.com will affect the books (or when). Strong revenues from pre-TMS products should help them.
– Regarding RecruitMax, my best guess is that they are not profitable. R&D and acquisitions may affect profitability for a few years, but that's true for anyone in this space.
– In my only comment on WorkStream, they are clearly not profitable. You can look at their financials yourself.

Technology, Automation, and Talent Case Studies

2005-12-14T04:36:00.000-08:00

I found this article in CFO Magazine’s online Fall 2005 issue. The full text is quite long and located here. It is a well written piece by Scott Leibs from September 15, 2005. Anything in block quotes below is a direct excerpt. There are so many good examples of everything we’ve been discussion over the last few weeks I had to take a few “case studies” and post them. Also, here are some previous posts that relate:

The truth about what “integration” means
Employer branding, talent and engagement Part 1
Employer branding, talent and engagement Part 2
Employer branding, talent and engagement Part 3
Technology's role in performance management

Often described as "the right person in the right place at the right time at the right price," workforce optimization combines managerial discipline with newer forms of information technology to produce, in theory, everything from perfectly staffed assembly lines to efficiently deployed consultants to well-crafted succession plans. At its most basic, it builds on earlier time-keeping and attendance systems in order to improve staff deployment. At its most sophisticated, it is essentially synonymous with human-capital management (HCM), a "full life cycle" approach to employees that encompasses everything from recruitment and hiring through training, career development, and compensation. While the ultimate goal — greater productivity and efficiency — is certainly in a company's best interest, many facets of workforce optimization are explicitly designed to improve the career prospects and job satisfaction of employees.

Case Study 1: The tie between Talent Management, Automation and Employee Engagement

That's where technology comes in. As Kimberly-Clark's global team developed the new process, it also shopped for software that could support it. A suite of HCM applications from SuccessFactors Inc. now helps speed the review process, in part by supplying a "robot" that provides thousands of sample phrases and assessments to help managers write reviews. Buthman says a review that once took him six or seven hours to prepare can now be done in a third of that time.

"Every employee needs a clear line of sight between what they do each day and how it relates to our global business plan," Buthman says. "That's how they understand the contribution they make. That's part of what makes them feel engaged by their jobs." And engagement, Buthman and others say, is critical to productivity, even if it can be hard to quantify. "

The connection between employee engagement and productivity may be opaque, but the link between performance and pay is much clearer — or could be. One problem with performance reviews, many experts say, is that managers often lack visibility into an employee's achievements throughout the year and instead tend to make decisions based largely on what the employee has (or hasn't) done lately. Many HCM software companies cite this as a reason to buy a full suite of products that can address everything from hiring and performance management to compensation and career planning. As Buthman says, "The ability to differentiate among performers and match those differences to pay really completes the loop."

Case Study 2: Business Intelligence

Randy MacDonald, IBM's senior vice president for human resources, says that as companies apply new kinds of technology to HR issues, they must also apply new measurements. "The CFO gets to see the CEO faster than anyone else," he says, "because he or she can show a series of metrics. HR is now doing the same." Some of those metrics are old hat, such as time to hire, attrition rates, and revenue per employee. But increasingly, HR departments are looking at other facets of the labor market. IBM, for example, looks at everything from the percentage of summer interns who sign on for full-time work to a rolling three-year forecast of anticipated labor needs. HCM software companies have added various metrics capabilities to their products, or partnered with business-intelligence firms that offer a range of "workforce analytics" applications.

Case Study 3: Competency Management Systems

The "all employees are not created equal" message is sometimes anathema to HR executives, but it reflects a new pragmatism taking hold at many companies. Advance Auto Parts, a retailer with more than 2,500 stores in North America, began to "recalibrate" its workforce three year ago in response to poor performance.

It developed a talent-management process that it implemented manually at first, then automated last year (with software from Authoria that integrates with an underlying system from Oracle/PeopleSoft). "The system gives us data we can analyze to see where competencies are strong or weak," says Bryant.

Case Study 4: Talent Acquisition Automation

Susan Burns, operational vice president for employment initiatives and college relations, says that while the front end of Retailology is essentially informational, the back end is a heavily automated candidate-tracking system that replaces a once intensely manual task, freeing HR staff to address "talent-opportunity areas." For example, if a promising candidate applies when there is no suitable opening, a Federated recruiter will maintain a dialogue with that person and alert the individual when an opening occurs. "Handling that kind of follow-up was virtually impossible when everything was paper- and phone-based," she says. Today, more than one quarter of the 100,000+ employees hired by Federated apply via the Web, and that percentage is growing. "No doubt it's a very cost-effective way to extend your reach," Burns says. "We expect the talent market to get even tighter, and we'll need more tools like this in order to keep the pipeline flowing."

CFO Magazine Survey on Employee Performance

2005-12-12T21:42:00.000-08:00

As a follow-up to yesterday's post, I found this article at CFO.com on employee productivity.

First of all, many of the 170 CFO's surveyed came from "small companies." Second of all, it's obvious that what CFO's/finance see as important HCM issues are very different than what HR practitioners see.

Question #3: Compensation is the biggest driver for employee effectiveness? I've written about this before. Comp drives employee recruitment, but it's engagement, opportunities and satisfaction that drive retention. I think what drives employee effectiveness are opportunities to grow. I will cave in however and say that a good incentive comp plan will also inspire certain types of workers to increase effectiveness.

Questions #4 & #5: It's interesting that employee learning is the best way to increase employee value, but training and skills/competencies are low on the issues list. CFO's in this survey are obviously looking at (in Q5) cost factors and not ways to drive employee value. I'm not entirely sure I want to make this next sweeping statement, but if you look at real cost vs value metrics, I bet the value in enhancing employee productivity incrementally are much greater than time spent shoring up benefit costs. Don't take that to mean they shouldn't work on benefit costs. I just think the CFO's are wrongly focused.

The below image comes from CFO.com. Please click here to read more about their survey.

Technology's role in performance management

2005-12-12T21:40:00.000-08:00

Workforce Performance Solutions Magazine had this article about technology's role in performance management. I thought it a bit obtuse, but I'll expand on my ideas below. I thought we were going to read about EPS systems and deployment. Instead the article was about LMS and how to deploy learning. I didn't really get the tie in until the bottom of the article. The below 3 bullets are an excerpt from the link above.

Competencies to Communicate Job Expectations to Employees: Just about everyone wants to perform well—it’s human nature. And for those employees who do want to perform well, there’s nothing more frustrating than confusion or uncertainty about what is expected of them. Building and maintaining a competency profile for every job role is an excellent way to clearly communicate expectations to employees. This is not only good for incoming employees who are new to a position, but also for experienced employees.

Competencies to Provide a Clear Path to Promotion: A competencies database and a way to search competencies by job position is an excellent vehicle for employees to understand what skills and competencies they must possess in order to be a candidate for promotion. BC Hydro is working to enable and encourage employees to browse different job positions and see the competencies required of each. By comparing their current competency ratings to those of the job they aspire to, employees—with the help of their supervisors—can begin to map out a development plan toward promotion. This not only empowers employees to take more control over their careers, but it also allows the company to have a proactive succession planning tool.

Competencies as a Benchmark to Track Employee Progress: There is probably no simpler or more effective way to track an employee’s performance against development goals than using competencies. Reviewing an employee’s learning and development history is a good starting point, but that approach only tells you what activities the employee has completed. It does not identify and quantify the impact the development activities have had on the employee’s capabilities. Comparing competency ratings for an employee over time is a more comprehensive and quantitative method for tracking an employee’s development progress.

I think most of you will agree that this is certainly not an inclusive list on technology's role in performance management. In fact, this is a bit of an indirect discussion of it. Today's EPS systems do everything from the basic data management of an employee's goals and performance history, to linking or storing compensation, job, learning, etc... However, technology really comes in to play when we talk about self service and how we role this functionality to the end users. In today's world, employees and managers should all be logging into a system to complete reviews. This is not to say that the face to face interaction has been replaced, but that the data management activities have been moved from paper to PC.

Along with this, EPS systems are going to contain any and all routing options an organization needs to manage approval levels or automate 360 degree reviews. The clincher however, is something I mentioned above. EPS systems can collect data from other systems. If you have competencies located on an LMS, the EPS can grab the data (or at least import depending on the skill of your implementor and IT department) and display it in the UI. Rather than your managers looking in 5 different sources for the data required to evaluate an employee, all the relevant data can be represented in a single place. This is crucial since we all know very few managers that will actually attempt to get ALL the data if it's not easily accessible. Next, the EPS should tie directly to the compensation system to continue the data cycle.

The below is part of an e-mail summary of the Wyatt report I received. The line where 52% of employees state their managers tie pay to performance is indicative of my statement above. The lack of data integration is what drives a real ability to tie competencies to performance, and performance to compensation.

WASHINGTON, November 28, 2005 – When it comes to practices that improve employee performance, companies and workers themselves agree there is room for improvement. This finding is based on a survey of 265 large U.S. companies across all industries and a complementary survey of 1,100 workers conducted by Watson Wyatt and WorldatWork.

In designing their performance management programs, most employers have adopted best practices — including providing a formal yearly review (98 percent), helping poor performers improve (96 percent) and offering coaching and feedback (91 percent) — but they have been less successful in implementing them. For example, while 92 percent of programs are designed to link pay to performance, only 79 percent of employers say that managers at their organization are moderately or greatly effective at it. Employees see even more room for improvement with only 52 percent indicating that their managers tie pay to performance.

Managers also struggle with providing formal career development and planning. While the vast majority (82 percent) of performance management programs are designed to include career development, only 37 percent of employers say that managers at their organizations are at least moderately effective at providing it. And only 31 percent of employees say their companies offer career development.

Tax Credit Screening (and a few $100K)

2005-12-09T13:04:00.000-08:00

A few days ago, I got an e-mail from someone requesting my thoughts on Projectix. The e-mail said, "I would say it [is a] TMS program. Wouldn't you?" A few e-mail exchanges later, I basically said that it was not a TMS system, it was an TAS system. This was actually being nice because when I worked with the produce a couple of years ago, it wasn't even a decent TAS. However, I'm very glad I held off because after having done some research, they have definitely stepped up and have much more functionailty added recently. I'm sticking with my guns though... TAS does not equal TMS.

(U.S. centric post follows...)

What does all this have to do with Tax Screening you ask? Well, nothing really. It's just that in my research om Projectix, I noticed a page on their website about tax credits.

What do tax credits have to do with TAS, HR or technology? In my opinion, tax credits have to be the least thought about process for HR professionals, and if your recruiting system/staff is not looking at this, then you're losing huge money. There is already enough complaining about HR being a cost center.

There are 2 general types of credits: welfare to work (WTW) and work opportunity tax credits (WOTC). Please don't kill me if I'm a little bit off here, but I'm not a tax accountant. WTW credits are what they sound like. Tax credits are offered any time you hire someone of a particular category. This could be a welfare recipient, a person of a certain age (usually young), etc. WOTC credits line up with what are called "empowerment zones." If you have a location in an empowerment zone (federal or state) each hire you make could qualify you for a credit.

When we talk about credits, we are talking about an average of $3000 per hire. Some of these credits are one time. Others are annually renewable forthe employee. So lets say you have 10K employees and 10$ turnover. For the 1000 employees you hire in a calendar year, you could qualify for $3M in credits. Credits are also not tax deductions. That $3K is not a tax deduction, it is a credit to the bottom line.

So HR technology? Well yeah. A couple years ago, we would have had our tax departments runing around trying to get all this paperwork in to the government agencies. (in most cases you have 28 days from the date of hire to get the credit) The fact that there are now vendors offering to automate this stuff is great. I don't know if RPO vendors are looking into this or perhaps already doing it, but it's a great opportunity for outsourcing.

Here are a couple vendors I know of: Projectix, ADP

GG and DD define "engagement"

2005-12-09T01:03:00.000-08:00

Gautam and I take a stab at clarifying our definitions of "engagement" here.

Mine is in the comments...

Authoria tops the TMS vendors?

2005-12-07T07:58:00.000-08:00

In a rare show of self control, a vendor has incredible press that it doesn't show off on it's website.

CHICAGO, HR Technology Conference and Exhibition, Oct. 20 /PRNewswire/ --
Authoria, Inc., the leader in integrated strategic Human Capital Management (HCM) solutions, won the industry's first Integrated Performance & Compensation Management Shootout today at the 8th Annual HR Technology Conference and Exposition in Chicago.
The 350 human resources professionals in attendance at the Shootout chose Authoria as the winner after witnessing live demonstrations from all four competitors. The demonstrations followed a scripted scenario written by Bill Kutik, conference co-chair, and Mark Albrecht, vice president of consulting at Salary.com. The three other competitors were Recruitmax, SuccessFactors and Workstream.
"Studies continue to show that Performance Management is priority No. 1 for HR executives and the C-suite," Kutik said. "Last year, we staged the industry's first Performance Management Shootout. This year, we went the next step toward getting full business benefits by integrating performance management with compensation management to compare industry leaders in an apples-to-apples contest, back-to-back for the first time."

It's pretty obvious that I consider Authoria, SuccessFactors, WorkStream, and Recruitmax to be the leaders in the field. My original reviews here and here. All of the vendors are undergoing an incredible amount of R&D at the moment as the industry demands more robust and comprehensive TMS solutions. The trick is that as these companies acquire functionality (much more acquiring than developing going on here), that they integrate well in the back end. Equally as important is that they create UI's that look seamless to the end users if the applications really are pieced together.

Interestingly, last year's "shootout" was performance only. A comment I got via e-mail from a reader (Andrew) suggested that all of these companies could probably survive on performance management alone for a few years. Indeed that's where the core demand is, but once performance is up, compensation is very soon to follow. Additionally, workforce planning is about to hit the market big time as the consulting world looks out 5-10 years, and the vendors are picking up on this. So while workforce planning and succession are not huge functional drivers today, I think (hope) that if a few years it will be as big as performance.

A couple of posts ago, I pointed out a talent management article on Deloitte's page. Notice that their discussion about talent management is about what I call workforce management, not performance or comp.

Back to Authoria and why they won the shoot-out. Well, I should first say that I was not there, do not know what the scripted scenario was, nor have I even seen the most current version of all 4 software packages. However, I'm betting that Authoria's background in knowledgebase and integrating data from multiple points into a single UI gives them an edge. I'm betting that Authoria won because their data transactions may have looked smoother and more seamless. I think RecruitMax's foray from TAS to TMS is still too new, but give them another 12 months to patch things together and they'll be a threat. (and actually, RecruitMax won the performance shoot-out in 2004 - however they acquired compensation earlier this year)

So what happened to WorkStream and SuccessFactors? Clearly we can't say that they didn't have the functionality, integration, or UI. In all honesty I bet the shoot-out was a pretty close decision that once again may have come down to UI and useability. The singe scenario demonstration certainly would not be enough to judge a ranking based on functionality.

I'm going to agree and give Authoria a thumbs up for UI and integration. The lead on functionality is highly subjective based on who the client/prospect is and functionality changes at lightspeed anyway. I'm going to do some research on the financials of these 4 vendors (and maybe a couple others too). I'll post that in a few days.

Employer branding, talent and engagement Part 3

2005-12-07T03:44:00.000-08:00

So what does all of this have to do with HR Technology and service delivery?

Employee Self Service/Portal

Manager Self Service/Portal

HR Service Center

Print Communications

I am a firm believer that while your verbal communications are your most powerful communications, your internet based tools and your call center are your most frequent methods of communication.

Employees will hit your self service portal for anything from viewing paychecks, enrolling in benefits, looking for policies, and just generally getting information. If your portal isn't up to par, the employer brand communicated is one of deficiency or even dysfunction. If integration is lacking and employees are logging in multiple times to multiple systems, you are sending a message about beauracracy and administration. The portal should be a smooth experience that they don't have to think about. OK - forget about the technology and user experience for a moment. The portal is also where you can consistently communicate a message. So if part of your employer brand is about community involvement, perhaps you have messaging about your matching gifts program featured prominently in the home page.

Managers are focused on certain things when they verbally communicate the employer brand. Things like the above "community involvement" often are missed by managers because they don't directly impact the operational business. This is ok - so long as you are effective in using the other communications tools. What managers are more concerned with are the obvious - performance feedback, compensation, employee relations... They are also concerned about hiring and training. Ease of use still apply here. However, the managers will also be exposed to tools and systematic processes that help them along the way. Effective communication requires dynamic tools to explain not only the manager's process, but how to communicate results to employees as well. So managers have access to the TAS, PMS, CMS, and LMS as great tools, but the use of the tools, explanation of policies, and communication to employees are all factors that must be thought about before the tool "goes live."

HR Service Centers and call centers are really another topic series. (forgive me...)

Employer branding, talent and engagement Part 2

2005-12-06T01:50:00.000-08:00

Note: This blog has moved to systematicHR.com. Please update your links. Posts will be maintained on both sites through the end of 2005.

So last time we talked about communicating brand and an overview of a chain of effect beginning with the manager communication and ending with the shareholder returns via the Microsoft model.

Andrew posted a link to David Kippen. I found this post about branding, talent acquisition and retention equally interesting. The following text is from David's blog:

Let’s assume key employees are leaving, that we’ve developed consensus that there’s a problem, done our due diligence by conducting exit interviews and qualitative and quantitative research among current employees. If our research indicates employees are being lured away by more generous time policies, better retirement plans—or even better pay, if there’s money and will to address it—HR may be able to do something about it. Now, I don’t want to suggest that HR has no operational impact: if research shows managers lack management skills, for example, HR can create training programs to address issues like this, too. But if the root problem is a misalignment between what the organization says about itself and what’s true about it, HR will need help to effectively address the operational issues that define “your work.”

This is where the need for a resonant, robust internal brand comes into play. Because it messages to what we do and why we do it, the internal brand serves to unify “my work” and “my organization.” Think of the internal brand as a clear light on a dark night: by aligning what we tell the marketplace with what we ourselves believe, a strongly-articulated internal brand helps managers and employees voluntarily align their work with their organization’s mission and values. And that voluntary alignment is a much stronger key to retention success than anything leadership can put in place if the recruitment promise doesn’t receive a payoff in the real day-to-day work experience.

David's idea of "voluntary alignment" is what I would call engagement. Employees who are engaged feel a stronger tie to their work and their employer. Repeating myself from a previous post, we find that cash outlays for direct employee benefit are very important for recruiting, but not as important for retention. They key factor here, is if you can move employees into the satsified and engaged range, you are not as at risk for employee attrition because employees now want to work for the company for reasons other than compensation.

Employee Acquisition: Cash Compensation, Benefits

Employee Retention: Total Compensation, Work-life balance

Employee Satisfaction: Work culture, stress, ability to impact work

Employee Engagement: Culture, job design, ability to impact customer, management.

So when David talks about why employees are leaving (better pay, time off, benefits...) the effective communication of the positive employer brand to engage employees would have minimized the entire issue of high attrition.

At the same time, Wyatt's Communication ROI study is suggesting a direct tie between communications to employees and ROI.

The study also found that a significant improvement in communication effectiveness is associated with a nearly 20 percent increase in a company’s market value. Specifically, the study identified nine communication practices that are directly linked to an increase in market value. The three practices associated with the largest increase in shareholder value are driving managers’ behavior to communicate effectively, connecting employees to the company’s business strategy, and following a formal communication process.

I'm taking the "connecting employees to the company’s business strategy" as more branding. In addition to the impact to the shareholder value, "Companies with high levels of communication effectiveness were 20 percent more likely to report lower turnover rates than their competitors."

Employer branding, talent and engagement Part 1

2005-12-05T01:18:00.000-08:00

I really need to thank Regina for linking to employerbrand.com. I'm finding it to be quite fascinating. There's really a huge amount of content here about employer branding and employee engagement. I think everyone should read/view the MicroSoft case study they have, not because it's the best one, but for me it's the easiest to follow (I'm a visual learner). The case of how great managers can affect the bottom line with this one (of I'm sure hundreds) strategy to engage their employees and create better results is pursuasive. What I find most interesting, is that managers are at the beginning of the chain. When you communicate your employer brand (as opposed to your customer facing "product brand"), there are probably just a few means of communicating this.

Print communications

Verbal/Management communications

Depending on the culture of your organization, and this would even vary by employee, I would guess that the web tools or the manager are the most effective means of communicating employer brand. Some people (like me) talk to their direct manager once every other month. However, we should make sure that we include direct training as part of the brand communication exercise contained within managing the employee. Every person to person interaction within your organization becomes part of the brand communication, and management should be particularly aware of the positive or negative niuances. As we think about person to person communications, we must also weigh in the effects of team building and camaraderie. Employees who experience higher levels of camaraderie in the workplace will have a more positive view of the employer brand. Managers must foster camaraderie and can do so by effectively utilizing teams and team building activities.

I'll talk more about "print communications" next post.

Google, Brand, Talent, Engagement

2005-12-02T14:13:00.000-08:00

It was all wrapped into a single post from one of Michael’s link posts. In this google blogger page where Trisha Weir talks about how she got to be hired (partly by selling WHY she owned a Google t-shirt) I have to give some kudos to the recruiter and hiring manager for recognizing a couple things:

Brand - Trisha clearly already recognized the google brand
Engagement - she has a high probablitlity of becoming an engaged employee. Being predisposed to liking google policies for employees based on what she sees in the market, she is already proud of her employer. Engagement isn’t that big a leap.
Talent Acquisition - when you’re ready to make a hire, how quickly can you make decision and onboard the person? In Trisha’s scenario, she went through phone screen to verbal offer in 3 work days. Great candidates don’t come across your desk often enough to be bogged down in decision beauracracy.
This also hits on a few other things we’ve talked about in my blog… how do you create work life balance, for one. I’ll admit that I check work e-mails every night, a few times on weekends, and when I’m on vacation.

KM and Learning organizations

2005-12-01T06:46:00.000-08:00

Gautam turned me onto this blog. So... What IS up with HR and Knowledge Management?

I don't hesitate to wonder about HR's motivation when it comes to KM. Truly, when we talk about "strategic HR" and the fact that as we head into 20xx we face huge workforce knowledge issues as a generation retires. We also deal with this as training organizations. Everyone in HR is in a state of frenzy over the loss the senior managers and what we should do, from succession planning, to recruiting, and talent management. How is it that HR practitioners are so complacent about working with and networking with KM professionals? Do I give us all the benefit of the doubt and assume that there are not enough KM people in our organizations?

More on Portals

2005-12-01T03:18:00.000-08:00

Blogger over at Systematic Viewpoints has been writing about PeopleSoft portals and his implementation experiences lately. Of particular interest is his/er organization's struggle with the HR portal versus the enterprise portal. If you're on common platforms (PS, SAP, PT) then integration isn't so bad. Even if they are not on the same platform, I'm not sure the enterprise portal really needs to interact with the HR portal. The content is sufficiently different and any data exchanges should be achievable through the data warehouse.

Well, I'll looking forward to seeing how his/er tools and portal implementations go. I'm especially interested to see what Oracle offers his/er organization in the upcoming months.

HR Technology - State of the Industry

2005-11-30T02:37:00.000-08:00

This is a reply to Jeff from the talentism.com blog, who in his post about quality vs cost, invited me to comment about waste in systems and technology.

The Seven Wastes are (defined by Taiichi Ohno, Toyota’s Chief Engineer ):

1 - The Waste of Overproduction

2 - The Waste of Waiting

3 - The Waste of Transporting

4 - The Waste of Inappropriate Processing

5 - The Waste of Unnecessary Inventory

6 - The Waste of Unnecessary Motions

7 - The Waste of Defects

As I think about this, there are so many areas of waste in HRMS and point solutions that it’s hard to decide where to start. Then I add in the HRO and outsourcing factor and it becomes even more confusing.

It’s ugly…

Unfortunately, most waste is political. In the HRMS world, HR as an administrative center does seem to be pretty low on the totem pole. Operational and lately finance systems have really had more focus (read: Funding) over many years. Add to that the fact that HR hasn’t really had a seat at the table until recently, and political power has not been on HR’s side. Add to that the fact that HR and PR are often separated into different silos (HR and Finance) and you have ever increasing political struggles that now include policy and procedure. Let me just ask: HOW HARD CAN IT BE TO GET A MANUAL PAYROLL CHECK APPROVED??? We haven’t even gotten to the systems waste yet!!!

Jeff’s insight is right on when end users get caught between buyers and the vendor. Add in another twist when the buyer is IT or purchasing departments. We have seen too many times (especially in the ERP 90’s) IT and HRIS departments building large teams of programmers just to support HR. In recent years, many organizations switched to “vanilla” software philosophies where HRIS no longer creates customizations and end users still don’t get what they need as they are forced to live with the system as delivered.

But it gets better…

I actually think that momentum has been changing in the favor of HR For a few years now. The systems are getting deeper, HR strategy is more focused and on target, and systems are focused on catering to the workforce – both user and employee level. A few years ago, you had to pick. Oracle for finance, so we might as well do Oracle for everything. Now, you can take Oracle for Finance, SAP for SCM, and find another HR system altogether – tie the whole thing up on the back end and nobody feels any pain. Then wrap your TAS, TMS, learning and portal solutions around HRMS and pump the whole thing into a data warehouse.

Before it gets worse again…

We were getting so close to a valid and achievable systems model and then we had to drop the HRO ball on everyone. The systems people just got outsourced along with the entire recruiting staff, the HRO vendor wants another $5M to finish implementing the portal, and the generalists are running amuck in confusion!!!

But I’m feeling positive… (or What's my point!!)

Listen, I don’t know if HRO is the right model for everyone, and I don’t know if it will pan out for anyone. What I do know, is that even though we keep playing with process (now in an HRO state), the systems really are a beacon of hope. A couple years ago we were customizing systems to automate our processes which were themselves modified for the systems sake. Today, we configure systems so that they conform to our strategies - not vice versa.

Waste? Sure there’s wasted energy. But I tell you what… I’d rather be in HR technology today than even just 2 years ago. And what else? 2007 and 2008 are going to be a couple years to watch out for.

What's a portal?

2005-11-29T22:44:00.000-08:00

Usually I'm right there with the 3 major consulting firms (Mercer, TP and WW). However, this time I'm not quite sure if Mercer get's what a portal is vs a web page.

Joe Loya and Debbie Slappey of Mercer said here:

In the past 10 years, many organizations grasped that the Web could transform the way they manage their HR activities — and many were quick to create HR portals on their intranets. Today, few HR portals are living up to their creators’ aspirations, and many, in fact, are simply “link-farms” to enrollment forms, vendor pages, outdated material, basic benefits information and change-of-address forms.

Clearly Mercer has a different definition of what a portal is. I'm sticking with Plumtree's explanation here. Basically, a portal brings together a large set of data within what are called portlets or pagelets depending on the specific technology you're using. Either way id doesn't matter. The portal and portlets will read your log-in information and retrieve data from other data sources using the permissions defined by your log-in. So when you go to your Yahoo or MSN homepage and read news, e-mail summaries, maps and whatever, that's a portal. Sure, you might have to launch another area to do more detailed stuff (like reading the entire article), but the fact is, you set a preference to have certain articles presented to you on the page. The HR portal is the same thing. The portal retrieves the relevant data and presents it. The portal does not simply provide hyperlinks.

You've heard me rant about vendors misuse of HR terminology for the sake of sales. For example, my favorite one is Talent Acquisition systems that call themselves Talent Management (to me a much broader category). I think Mercer does the same here. Their "new HR portal" is at first glance a total comp statement that might bring together 401(k), benefits, payroll, etc.. People... a total comp statement is not a portal. The data within the statement is not a dynamic reflection of real time data.

I'll give Mercer the second one. The DHL example really does look like a valid portal experience. Unfortunately, the title of the paper " Companies may be missing the whole picture on HR portals" turns out to be a sales pitch about total comp. I think the authors doe a great disservice to their employer (a great consulting firm) by misdirecting their audience and not really understanding the technology. Clearly these are comp consultants who should not be teaching the world about portals.

What's up at Hewitt?

2005-11-29T22:03:00.000-08:00

Jason also posted this about Hewitt recently. I actually don't have a further comment other than I've been seeing lots of laid off Hewitt associates filtering through other organizations. Anyone know the full extent of these layoffs and to what organizations? Are they really trimming the consulting business that much?

Accenture's place in HRO

2005-11-29T21:44:00.000-08:00

Jason of the Human Capitalist posted some analysis of Accenture's seeming decline in the HRO world. While we differ slightly in our HRO rankings, I think we'll see some interesting developments as Accenture begins to play in the mid market space. They are currently courting several prospects in the sub-20K employee market with what I consider an odd assortment of software partners. The obvious ones are WorkBrain, RecruitMax and Success Factors. However, their HR/PR suite for the mid market is quite a bit more surprising. (hope to post this later in December if they release data publicly).

What is even more surprising is how agressively Accenture is controlling scope. The mid market is a tough game to play. Companies think they are large and deserve the services of a $500M contract. But then they don't want to spend the money. ADP has long had the best lock on this market. Nobody understands how to sell to it better, so the big guns better be ready for a competitor they see little of in the Fortune 500 space.

Jason is right though - Accenture better get a big win soon before momentum shifts again.

Business Case for RPO

2005-11-28T19:40:00.000-08:00

(where RPO = Recruitment Process Outsourcing)

Jeff Hunter of the Talentism.com blog has a very interesting post on the causes of RPO. His experience is the same as mine... internal recruiting organizations with highly positive feedback are getting outsourced more and more.

While I like Jeff's conclusions about how to improve the recruiting function's control over the outsourcing decision, I'm not sure that's persuasive to an executive. The solution is for recruiters to be more accountable for the new hire's success. Jeff argues that the recruiting function looks to find people, not fill positions. The long term objective of filling positions is left to the hiring manager, and the recruiter does not have sufficient stake in the new employee. I've argued in the past that new hire onboarding belongs to the recruiting function, and that onboarding is a process that should last from the date of offer acceptance until possibly 6 months after the hire date. I'm not sure how much longer a recruiter could reasonably follow an employee's onboarding without growing the recruiting staff.

So far I agree with Jeff. Here's where I disagree. Each of these arguments is simply a matter of scale.

First, I believe that executives see two things in RPO. The first is cost reductions. The RPO organization might be able to hire recruiters to recruit for multiple organizations. Therefore, the productivity of each recruiter should be higher.

Second, I think time to hire is critical to executives. RPO organizations will have an easier time creating a pool of candidates that is ready to interview. When a job requisitions reaches then, they should be able to quickly move on known candidates, rather than taking time to advertise for the specific job. Their presence in the market is powerful: they command many more job requisitions, and therefore, they have a much larger, more captive candidate base than any single company possibly could.

So I think the trend towards RPO is growing and picking up momentum. However, this really should allow the smart recruiting manager/director of talent or whatever to focus on things like onboarding.

Getting Even (off topic - HR politics)

2005-11-28T06:46:00.000-08:00

OK, this is not a HR tech post, but I thought it was very interesting.

I got this from BostonWorks which cited WAGEproject.org. This issue of gender pay differentials should be treated very seriously by HR professionals and especially compensation. It's sad to think that even in this century, we are going to struggle with this problem (and race too I'm sure) for decades if not for longer than that.

Women Are Getting Even (WAGE) is a great brand. It suggests that we are getting closer to that elusive equity, but also that women are getting more aggressive (which I agree with). I truly believe that most HR organizations really do care about pay equity, but we are often hampered by managers who don't have the same priorities.

As technology progresses and we are able to better measure skills and competencies vs. job requirements, hopefully we'll be able to tie actual wages to a person's abilities. However, this takes both time and money to roll out, and only the big HR organizations can afford this stuff. Technology brings hope to me, because personal bias is too hard to overcome alone.

(ok - that's my rant for the 4th quarter...)

Oracel Fusion and the current Oracle HRMS

2005-11-27T21:50:00.000-08:00

I loved (and have also discussed) this from another blog:

FUSION
I just wanted to make a few comments on the Fusion product. I apologize, but I'm still trying to get more clarity around the scope of this release/product, but it appears to be software that will be similar to middleware, where several applications can run on the same Fusion software. I'm not sure what this means in terms of modifications to the current tech stack, but I'm sure there will be some major changes. The scope of this release is very concerning. I can't comprehend how they are going to seemlessly get all of the suites (Oracle, PeopleSoft Enterprise, PeopleSoft Enterprise One) to operate on the same software. What a daunting task. I can't help but hope that Fusion doesn't stand for:

Fouled
Up
Software
Inoperable
On
Networks

Anyway, I'm keeping the faith and hoping for the best!!!

The same blogger (Patch Adams) also had a post recently about Oracle HRMS. As many of us in the HRMS world have concluded, Oracle HRMS isn't the greatest thing out there. This post gives a decent comparison of PeopleSoft and Oracle HRMS.

HRO Updates

2005-11-22T18:50:00.000-08:00

A couple of news items crossed my path that I thought were interesting.

First, Arinso recently got certified in their SAS 70 Type 2. I'd like to just say that if you're a public company in the U.S. going for full HRO (with benefits and payroll), please ask to see if your vendor has their SAS 70 Type 2's. I'm not sure what they were certified on, but it looks like it's only payroll processing controls. I'm not sure as I'm not a finance guy, but don't they need to certify not only gross to net, but timekeeping, tax filing, garnishment processing and other payroll processes individually? It also begs the question if they have already done their benefit SAS 70. Since these are also large employer expenses, they will definitely hit the bottom line. Maybe a finance person who's actually read Sox can weigh in.

Second, it's been pretty obvious in my HRO posts that I don't take Ceridian seriously. They were recently awarded an HRO contract for 8000 employees in the U.S. and Canada.

Ceridian will be responsible for a wide range of processes for 8,000 PHH employees in the U.S. and Canada, including HR and payroll management, benefits, time and attendance, talent and acquisition management, COBRA, Flexible Spending Account services, tax filing, work-life and employee assistance program (EAP), and HR compliance. In its role as HRO provider for PHH and its other HRO clients, Ceridian provides functional support of multiple HR and benefits functions, and in turn alleviates recurring administrative tasks and cost burdens for its client companies.

I'm actually surprised that Ceridian can put together that broad of an offering. While I really doubt they will be able to handle it in the back end (other than herds of people duct taping the thing together), it is an impressive assortment of services for this company. As the HRO mid market grows (currently dominated by ADP), we'll see if Ceridian can build some momentum.

SuccessFactors TMS review

2005-11-18T00:16:00.000-08:00

So after being told that my talent management “scorecard” was incomplete and inadequate, I visited one of the SuccessFactors webinars and got a high level overview. Keep in mind that the opinions here are simply those gained from a 1 hour presentation and I don’t know what I don’t know – these are just first impressions.

That said, the first impressions were rather good. In fact, I’m quite positively impressed. First of all, I really like the on-demand software model. Vendor hosts everything and rolls out modules to clients as needed similar to the salesforce.com or workday.com model. Secondly, they sport a pretty impressive client list. I won’t name them here, but you can check it out at successfactors.com. Third, I love any product with dashboards. Dashboards are a great way to tell managers (who never have enough time) how they are doing on key metrics on a single page. I’m not a communications expert, but navigation and layout seemed pretty intuitive to me.

In terms of functionality, SuccessFactors is really a workforce performance management play with some other stuff. Succession, performance, compensation, employee surveys are all core functions with goals and competencies wrapped around the whole thing (and then analytics further wrapped around that). All in all, a very nice package. Their performance and succession modules were very robust, but I felt a bit disappointed in the comp management side. Granted I didn’t see all there was to see.

Rant:

I should note here that I’m always disappointed in the comp side of TMS products. Compensation is similar to LMS and LCMS. The functionality needed there is so extreme that you really need specific software. So even though when I talk about integrated TMS as talent acquisition, succession, LMS, performance, comp… there are certain grouping of functionality that easily fit together, and others that require more specialization. So this isn’t really a critique of SuccessFactors since I believe none of the TMS vendors to LMS and Comp that well unless its their specialty.

OK – back to reality. What’s wrong with comp? Well, nothing really. It’s basic comp. This means that you can post merit increases, do some stuff with variable pay and non-cash incentives. When I talk about full comp functionality (that nobody but Hewitt, Mercer, Towers Perrin and Wyatt have) I’m talking about full global compensation databases with job categorizations and the whole shebang. SuccessFactors is not competitive with the big comp players, but sufficiently competitive with the other TMS players.

So all in all, I have very positive first impressions of their TMS suite. I’m hoping to see more of them (perhaps in a vendor selection) in real practice.

HRO Buying Process Guide

2005-11-17T05:23:00.000-08:00

Prior Post updated to include real links to the publisher. I had the text of the entire series, but only 4 of 6 links below. You'll have to look for the other 2.

This is a 6 part series in The Edge's Financial magazine - a daily and weekly magazine in Malasia. It was written by Leo Fernandez, a Hewitt employee. When I was writing this, The Edge had let their domain name expire. Therefore, understanding that I'm violating 1000 copyright laws, I'm posting 5 of 6 articles in pdf form. The pdf preserves the copyright mark of the publisher and names the writer, etc... At such time that the publisher wants this removed from this blog, I will do so immediately one I receive an e-mail. I will do the same if requested by the author or by Hewitt. I will not check to see if the Edge gets their domain back.

Exciting times ahead for HRO
Choosing the right partner
No shortcut to success
Management: When partners really partner

Wharton: The Trade-off between Talent and Disruptive Behavior.

2005-11-17T05:20:00.000-08:00

OK - this is way outside of my comfort zone and expertise. However, Wharton pushed out a great article on the Tyrell Owens debate called 'One for All' or 'One for One'? The Trade-off between Talent and Disruptive Behavior.

There are a couple of factors here. First off, what is the tradeoff between talent and disruptive behavior. We do often find that talent comes with a fair share of arrogant and egotistical people who believe their way is the only wat. It really depends on your ogranization and the culture you are trying to achieve. Sales oriented organizations might be more forgiving of these types of disruptions and the conflicts they bring. Service and production facilities might desire more peaceful operations. I think that heavily sales oriented, entrepreneurial companies are willing to put up with more crap.

Second of all, I wonder what T.O. is doing to his "brand" as he creates these disruptions. Sure, he might be the "best" at what he does, but he can only do his job in a heavily team orented environment. In Tom Peter's "a brand called you" is T.O. destroying his brand be being over the top? I'd love to hear Regina or another branding expert comment on this.

Is ADP HRO #2 in the industry?

2005-11-16T17:59:00.000-08:00

A recent ADP press release had a few interesting new facts.

Apparently, 32 multi-national corporations have signed on for ADP's HRO platform based on SAP. This is far more than I thought it would be, and in addition to ADP's standard platform (ADP Enterprise) for U.S. domestic populations, I think this easily puts ADP in the #2 spot for total sales.

One other note was that these 32 companies provided service for 190,000 employees. This fits in with what we know about ADP HRO being a mid-market solution. If you average it out, we're talking about 6,000 employees per company. These might be $20-100M contracts, but nowhere near the $300M to $1B contracts that Accenture, IBM and Hewitt are after (over 7 years). So number 2 in volume of sales certainly does not equate to revenue in this case.

TPI and Equaterra merging

2005-11-15T04:29:00.000-08:00

Jason posted this about TPI and Equaterra merging today (or yesterday). I've also been hearing rumors for some time about one of them getting bought by a consulting firm, but I suppose this is better for them. Check Jason's blog for more info.

For those of you who don't know, TPI and Equaterra are the biggest names in vendor searches and are quite well known in HRO and service delivery circles

www.worstreview.com (off topic)

2005-11-14T17:49:00.000-08:00

I got this from Successfactors.com. Not much there yet, but should be funny/interesting when it gets going.

HR/PR Outsourcers - New Rankings

2005-11-14T03:53:00.001-08:00

A reader recently wrote to me requesting my thoughts on payroll outsourcers and their HR products. This was written for a 500 employee organization. I'm posting because I don't think I've ever ranked payroll outsourcers. Here are my verbatim comments below:

I have not done any rankings purely on HR/Payroll outsourcers. Most of my knowledge would also be with larger organizations. However, below are my brief opinions in no particular order (not sure if they are on the blog or not). I only talk about national vendors below. Smaller regional vendors will provide better overall service quality, but their compliance standards
are questionable (tax primarily).

ADP will almost definitely be the most stable environment for you regarding payroll processing. Their tax, garnishment and print/distribution processes are overall better controlled than their competitors.
ADP products have changed fairly significantly over the last 3 years. PCPW is being phased out for newer and better internet products. These products will also include decent self service (as will Ceridian).
If you are in a growth mode or think you will close in on 1000 employees in the next 5-7 years, do not consider PayChex. Period, end of statement. Otherwise, you can look at them but their HR is terrible and technology is very last century.
Ceridian will allow more flexibility on the HR side. If you can manage an upgrade to their eSource platform, they will have much better HR functionality than ADP will. ADP has superior HR functionality that they only sell to larger organizations (over 1000 employees).
Ceridian HR (see #3 above) must be used and implemented very carefully. Their product set has been pieced together over the years and is not truly integrated from a database architecture standpoint.

On the Customization comment:

I find a significant difference between customization and configuration. Configuration is the changing of table values (for example adding cost centers, jobs or location codes). Customization is actually modifying/creating a table and adding core functionality that was not there before.
Don't customize!!! Find a product that is sufficiently configurable to meet your needs. If you need to customize, Ceridian is more flexible. However, I've been to many companies that have customized their software and basically screwed up their whole PR process. Once again, ADP has stricter controls. For something like PR, this is a good thing.
Your needs below (allocations, dept numbers) should fall in the config category. Either ADP or Ceridian should work fine.

Rankings for HR (500 employee company) (keep in mind I'm focused on Fortune 1000's and have a bias regarding what I think is decent software)

1. Ceridian eSource
2. ADP (don't remember the product name - and remember we're not talking about ADP Enterprise here)
3. None (PayChex isn't even worth mentioning)

Rankings for PR (you are going to be hostage to whichever processing center you are close to. Some processing centers within the same vendor will be better or worse than others.) You didn't mention what size organization you were 3 years ago. If you have grown, you might be able to expect slightly better service, but the real leap in service quality happens at
around 1000 employees.

1. ADP
2. PayChex
3. Ceridian

Follow-up on HRO providers

2005-11-03T19:39:00.000-08:00

In my post for Fidelity HRO, I listed my top 5 HRO vendors. A consulting colleague (of unknown firm) who works closely in the HRO space e-mailed me this follow-up:

interesting view of the top 5 hro providers. i play heavily in this space as a hr consultant and not sure i would classify the same way.

true global hr bpo providers:
IBM - just because they are IBM... but limited experience to date
Hewitt - 800 lb gorilla
Convergys - well kept secret
Accenture - waffling commitment to hro - maybe doing a deal with hewitt?
ACS - low cost provider. would like to see them do something real after mellon. have been quiet and having contract problems.
ExcellerateHRO - wanna be... no real success.... TP relationship is interesting, but not so sure the marketplace has seen the power of it yet

others providing niche services but not really offering true HR BPO
ADP - payroll plus
Fidelity - hr/ben/pay for us clients
Arinso - pan-european payroll plus
etc

Thanks for the follow-up, it will be great to continue this discussion as the industry evolves. ADP is really the only player I might disagree on. They might be pulling together the HR side of HRO and their international offering is growing on SAP. However, the HRO and international salespeople are silo'd and the offerings may not be compatible.

Fidelity HRO comments

2005-11-03T01:17:00.000-08:00

Edited on 11/03/2005: This evening, I received an e-mail from Workforce Magazine requesting that I remove some text of the Fidelity HRO article from my post. In my attempt to be a "good citizen" the text has been removed, but you can still hyperlink to the article. Here you go:

I found this article on Fidelity HRO on the Workforce.com website. As with other articles on specific vendors, I found it to be somewhat misleading. Chances are, Workforce.com interviewed a PR or marketing person for the article and simply reprinted the statements. I've publicly criticized other articles and corporate press releases in the past, so obviously I have no problem doing so now.

For example, the article states that Fidelity provides 2 or more services to over 100 companies with more than 10,000 employees. The first of these services could be 401(k) and the second could be ESPP. There is really no way of knowing how Fidelity characterizes "services" and if they are indeed HRO types.

What (if anything) do I agree with? It says that some analysts say Fidelity is in the top 3 or top 5 of HRO providers. My top 5 are Accenture, ACS, ADP, ExcellerateHRO, Fidelity and Hewitt (in alpha order). There are actually many HRO vendors looking for that 5th spot and are very close and I named 6 because in my opinion 3 of those 6 are tied for spots 4,5,6.

The last paragraph of the article talks about how Fidelity built it's own system and is courting the SAP and PeopleSoft users of the world. I'll just state that I don't have full confidence in Fidelity's build-out. They use the Oracle database as a platform and basically created code and tables from the ground up. Early installations went poorly and the functionality was incredibly weak but I have some confidence that the database is much improved. However, I don't know that it's SAP quality yet.

Hewitt for sale?

2005-11-01T18:03:00.000-08:00

Somewhere in my last 100 posts I mentioned that Hewitt was in a fairly weak operational position and might be an aquisition target. I'll have to admit that I didn't really believe it, and honestly I still don't. They are the undisputed leader in HRO at the moment, and their laser-like focus on this market should get them out of any growing pains they have.

However, I should mention that I found this text in Yahoo! finance:

Leder reported that Hewitt Associates (NYSE: HEW - News) filed an 8-K form granting 65,000 restricted shares to four company bigwigs and "change in control" severance agreements to some 24 executives. She notes that, "The agreements are fairly standard.... But they're probably worth paying attention to, since we've all seen this type of pattern -- expanding the number of folks covered by change in control agreements -- as an almost routine event when a company is prepping itself for a sale."

The HR Marketplace - Overview

2005-10-28T04:56:00.000-07:00

I wanted to comment on some interesting research from HRMarketer.com. They put out the “Marketing and Selling in the HR Marketplace: Winning Strategies and Tactics” paper this month which contains great insight.

First a note on the marketplace:
The top 0.1% (930 out of 1.2M) of companies employ about 30% of the workforce. These are organizations with over 10K employees and are relatively difficult to market to. However, when that market has been successfully penetrated, incredible revenues from volume are probable. A similar number of companies (934) employ between 5000 and 999 employees and constitutes an additional 6% of the workforce. You can see from these statistics why top tier companies are trying to penetrate the mid-market and straying away from old philosophies that only the Fortune 1000 was worth selling to. In total, about 40% of the total workforce are employed by organizations with over 1000 employees.

For HR vendors whose source of business is derived from employee volume (HRO vendors, traditional outsourcers like ADP and Ceridian, and many software vendors) increasing volume with fewer sales would be extremely attractive. In the right sales model, sales acquisition costs (incrementally per additional employee) could also be significantly less expensive.

Below, I’ve graphically highlighted from HRMarketer’s published text. Unlike previous diagrams I’ve made, this is wholly agree with their categorization of the market. However, I’ll use it for illustration purposes.

(click for full size image)

I have also moved some of these “pillars” around as I see them. Granted I’m biased as a consultant, but indeed I think most of you would acknowledge that few vendors provide the strategic and objective expertise that a consulting organization will.

(click for full size image)

My simple view of the HR world is that HR organizations (with or without their consultants) need to navigate these “trends” that are occurring in HR. We see constant shifts in these trends, and senior HR management must determine which are useful to their organization. It’s also important to identify which trends have been recycled and re-branded. In many cases a “new” trend has indeed existed for some time and may have been implemented (unsuccessfully). Once the strategies have been formulated, the tactical data framework may be sought out. I separated outsourcing and HRMS from consulting because these are less advisory services, and more data services. For obvious reasons, HRMS and Outsourcing data services reside at a higher level than the point solutions. Once again, for the point solutions, I don’t agree with the categorization, but won’t change what HRMarketer has done for this purpose.

Cisco Systems uses games to help teach employees

2005-10-25T06:58:00.000-07:00

We’ve talked a lot about the use of games and the next generation of employees. Cisco is employing this strategy, but their gaming/learning technology is still in its infancy (as shown by the fact that they are modeling on a monopoly-like concept… a game that is 30 years old (or more). Monopoly may lengthen the attention span of 30 and 40 somethings, but will it captivate the Gen-Y’ers?

New HR-XML Certifications

2005-10-25T05:57:00.000-07:00

There are many new names on the list. Some are quite surprising such as Oracle, Brassring and Recruitmax who all should have been on the list earlier.

If you are unfamiliar with the HR-XML Consortium, they are publishing XML standards so that a single XML layout may apply to a large industry segment. For example, SAP and Oracle could use the exact same XML layout and send the file to Brassring or Recruitmax. There’s no such thing as a “custom interface” if these standards are in force.

New HR Technology Blog

2005-10-24T17:39:00.000-07:00

OK, It may not actually be so new as he's been around since June, but along with Michael Specht and myself, there's another HR Technology blogger. Jason Corsello of the Yankee Group has some excellent content. I look forward to collaborating and discussion these issues with him in the future.

Oracle Fusion - More details

2005-10-24T04:13:00.000-07:00

It appears that there is more information leaking out of Oracle these days regarding Fusion. First of Siebel CRM is not in the current plans for Fusion. The Siebel acquisition was made after the initial Fusion architecture decision and has not yet been included. Second, the first wave of Fusion applications that will be made available will be HR, Financials and Manufacturing. I don't know if HR incudes payroll, but I expect it does not.

Success Factors TMS

2005-10-24T03:51:00.000-07:00

Brent (of unknown origin) sent me a note about Success Factors:

Hi. I've been looking at your blog as I'm doing research on talent management systems, and I noticed that SuccessFactors is not included anywhere. Is this because you don't see it as a tms or is it just lower on the list?

Brent

My list of TMS systems is generally confined to ones I consider to be major players. However, there would obviously be vendors in this market segment that I'm not sufficiently familiar with or have not worked with yet. There will also be emerging players as time goes on. Success Factors is one of these. Thanks, Brent, for bringing them up and I'll see if anyone I know has enough knowledge to help me with a review.

At first glance, they seem to have a solid client base with fairly comprehensive functionality. Seems they lean towards workforce planning and performance but lack the learning and compensation side of TMS. I'll see if I can do a review on these guys depending on who I know.

HRO or PEO?

2005-10-18T05:43:00.000-07:00

HR.com seems to have shown their considerable lack of understanding regarding HRO. While they are actually a very good source of information, I see them as similar to SHRM. Both of these organizations cater to mid-sized organizations and are rather unsophisticated from that standpoint. Article Here.

Although the jury is still out on the real benefits of staff function outsourcing, preliminary research suggests it is working reasonably well for some clients. In fact, there are reports that HR cost savings have reached a whopping 10-20 percent in some organizations! Pardon my sarcasm, but that amounts to a paltry $50,000-$100,000 saved for every $500,000 of HR budget.

If you have been in the market for HRO, you'll have noticed that nobody wants to talk to you unless you have 5-10K employees. All the real HRO deals we've seen involve 20K employees and up. When was the last time you saw an organization with 20K employees and a $500K budget? OK, when was the last time you saw an organization with 5K employees and a $500K budget? Right... NEVER!!

The facts are that HRO can't even be implemented for under $1M these days and even that's a stretch. Most real deals are implementing for $3M and up... 6 times our HR.com guy's budget. Accenture (et. al.) are just now trying to get into the mid market for HRO. They don't have a client yet, but the target market will be under 10K employees. This mid-market offering will implement for around $2-3M and will probably cost $1M/year. (costs are a guess - As far as I know - they haven't even sold a deal yet)

This HR.com guy is talking about HRO savings for an organization that does not exist because they are not a client any HRO vendor would take!!! 10-20% of your budget? Yeah... any smart company would take that because the real budget for a real potential HRO client is NOT $500K.
In fact, the HR.com guy might be confusing what we call PEO's (Professional Employer Organizations) in the U.S. for HRO. PEO's are quite similar, except for the fact that they are aimed at very small to to small organizations. I'd be surprised if there's a company with over 1000 employees using a PEO. Getting back to HR.com's numbers, it would not be unlikely for an organization smaller than 1000 employees to have an annual budget of $500K.

OK - I'm done with my rant.

Post Update:

Steven Levy from the Electronic Recruiting Blog e-mailed me this comment:

You realize that HR.com has a penchant for making broad brush statements that are not supported by facts? One might wonder if they believe that HRO is a viable alternative for any org. Hmmm - could it be that their strategic focus is on orgs that are maintaining in-house capabilities versus outsourcing???

Nice blog.

Steve

I've resorted to posting comments mannually? There has to be another way. Perhaps Michael Specht can help me. His HR Blogs community seems like the way to go. Perhaps that's my next step.

New HR Technology Products

2005-10-13T03:03:00.000-07:00

I won't be there, but next week's HR Tehnology Conference will be host to dozens of product unveilings and launches. Here's just a peek of what's coming:

Authoria ( http://www.authoria.com/ ) The knowledge-based and Talent Management Suite vendor will make a major announcement, with details to be released at the show.
CyberShift ( http://www.cybershift.com/ ) Focused on helping large, complex organizations manage their workforces, workforce management software and services provider CyberShift will discuss details of its agreement with HR outsourcing provider Ceridian to offer its workforce optimization solutions to select Ceridian HRO clients.
Enwisen ( http://www.enwisen.com/ ) Enwisen will unveil AnswerSource Total Compensation Statements, which allow companies to send up-to-date, personalized, year-round total rewards statements to employees. AnswerSource Total Compensation Statements can be deployed in weeks and refreshed year-round for less than a one-time printed statement.
HRsmart, Inc. ( http://www.hrsmart.com/ ) HRsmart will unveil version 8.0 of its applicant tracking system with new features that include an hourly recruiting module with kiosk functionality, an integrated survey tool, enhanced EEO compliance tools and seamless integration for assessment, job distribution, resume spidering, background checking, drug testing and other tools.
iCIMS ( http://www.icims.com/ ) iCIMS, Inc. will announce an integration alliance with CareerBuilder that will allow iCIMS' 275+ clients to access CareerBuilder.com directly from its own iRecruiter interface and facilitate job posting there, as well as improve candidate sourcing from CareerBuilder.
Kenexa ( http://www.kenexa.com/ ) Kenexa will unveil its Infinity Survey System created for large companies to conduct ongoing pulse surveys and for small to mid-sized companies to run company-wide surveys. It comes with a best practices library with validated survey items and has a reporting function that determines what is driving engagement within an organization.
Knowledge Infusion ( http://www.knowledge-infusion.com/ ) Knowledge Infusion, strategic HCM consultancy in San Ramon, CA, will be launching new consulting services that will expand the company's current portfolio of service offerings and help PeopleSoft HRMS customers plan their next strategic move.
Plateau Systems ( http://www.plateau.com/ ) Plateau Analytics 5.5 provides information and analysis to increase workforce productivity, ensure compliance, and reduce costs. Thousands of daily transactions are aggregated into a high-level snapshot that provides macro-level visibility. The solution provides comprehensive, turnkey learning and performance management reporting.
Recruitmax ( http://www.recruitmax.com/ ) Recruitmax will announce Balance, a total compensation management solution that combines manager self-service compensation planning with back-office administrative and analytical tools for compensation specialists to manage base salary and incentive processes.
Saba ( http://www.saba.com/ ) The Learning Management and Talent Management Suite vendor will make a major announcement with details to be announced at the show.
Sage Software ( http://www.sage.com/ ) Sage Software will showcase Sage Abra HRMS version 8.0, the latest version of its HRMS for mid-sized organizations. This version features support for multiple databases, including Microsoft SQL Server, MSDE and Visual FoxPro.
SAP ( http://www.sap.com/ ) The ERP and HRMS vendor will make a major announcement, with details to be released at the show.
Webhire, Inc. ( http://www.webhire.com/ ) Webhire will introduce TalentScope, a new service designed to maximize online recruiting by helping talent managers reach passive candidates faster and with greater accuracy. Webhire simplifies the process of buying keyword ad placements by offering a turnkey package customized to the jobs customers are trying to fill, monitoring results of the campaign and automatically reporting those results back to the employer. Additionally, the company will be making two more major product announcements at the conference.
Workbrain ( http://www.workbrain.com/ ) Workbrain will announce Workbrain 5, the latest version of the company's fully integrated workforce management solution. With version 5, Workbrain has added new and enhanced products and services to enable the world's largest and most complex organizations to align long-term workforce planning with daily operations to optimize workforce performance. Workforce Intelligence Institute Workforce Intelligence Reports link staffing, leadership, planning, performance, training and retention investments to 30 financial, marketing and operational outcomes for better decision support.
WorkForce Software ( http://www.workforcesoftware.com/ ) WorkForce Software will unveil version 6.0 of its enterprise time and attendance software, with full international capabilities, including support for multiple languages, currencies and data formats. Workscape ( http://www.workscape.com/ )
Workscape will make a major new product announcement at the HR Technology Conference.

MS Windows Workflow

2005-10-12T01:36:00.000-07:00

Michael posted this on Moscrosoft's beta workflow engine. Quite interesting I think. While I'm pretty sure I'm not quite technical enough and thus won't download the entire beta for trial, the MS write-up on MSDN didn't make me do backflips. I'll admit this is a good start though, and that it's hard to make me happy.

Windows Workflow Foundation will be used across many future Microsoft products including The Microsoft Office System, BizTalk Server and the Microsoft Dynamics Products (previously known as Microsoft Business Solutions products). Most applications can benefit from the asynchronous state management features of the workflow model, the rapid development features of the designer, the potential for end-user flexibility, and the increased visibility into run-time code execution.

First: Having a workflow engine that cuts through MS Office is a wonderful thing. No more turning on track changes and e-mailing things back and forth. However, I'm surprised that MS SQL Server is not listed here. If all we're talking about is the workflow of files rather than deep integration with stored data, then I think MS hasn't gone far enough.

Second: Notice that they use the term "asynchronous" for their workflow engine? I'm not sure how you write code in 2005 that uses an async transaction methodology.

The major difference between database workflow engines is they trigger off of data events. This could be someone saving data into a specific field (new hire event), data changing in an aoutomated fashion (increase life insurance rates on someone's birthday). Microsoft's workflow seems less data dependent and more of a management function.

Selecting a Performance MS whitepaper

2005-10-12T01:13:00.000-07:00

HR.com's whitepaper by RecruitMax is an okay overview of selecting a PMS system. In my opinion, it was a bit functional in nature. Here are my highlights:

Define expected outcomes: it was only one sentence, but keep in mind that when chaning systems, it's the best time to reengineer processes. Know beforehand if you want to recreate your current process and spend money on customization, or if you want to go vanilla. Determining this prior to your search (and definitely prior to implementation!) is critical.
Establish a selection team: Know your governance structure. How are decisions going to be made? Who is responsible for the decisions and ultimately the stakeholder? What is the corporate philosophy regarding policies and procedures?

2005 HRO Trends and Insights

2005-10-11T02:08:00.000-07:00

Disclaimer: yeah... Hewitt could be considered a competitor of the firm I work for. If you read the rest of my blog, I generally consider them to be a vendor though.

Hewitt's 2005 HRO trends and Insights published in June (2005) caught my eye for some interesting analysis if you read between the lines.

The survey was conducted with 129 employers with about 2/3 of them below 10K employees. While the average size of the respondents had 15K employees, this tells me that there are some very large HRO clients out there, but the majority of the prospect base for new sales will be in the mid market arena. (see my previous post where I say the mid market is where the action will be).
Hewitt may be misdefining HRO. Any vendor will do this to inflate their numbers and mislead the prospect base regarding the number of clients they serve. While Hewitt has been in the benefits and DB/DC industry for a long time, I would not consider a 401(k) client a HRO client. Their stats that the respondents averaged from $1M to $45B in annual revenues leads me to believe that the $1M respondents are pure benefit or only 401(k) clients. A $1M client can't afford real HRO.
Hewitt surveyed current and the potential outsourcing picture in 3 years. DB and DC outsourcing is obviously high at the 70-85% rate.
Surprising to me was that the current payroll outsourcing rate is only 30% and they project it to increast to 50%. Considering that ADP pays about 25-30% of the U.S. workforce, and Ceridian and Paychex probably pay another 20%, I'm wondering where Hewitt got their current numbers. I do agree that PR outsourcing will grow as it becomes more acceptable to the large employer market.
Also surprising to me was that they did not measure HRMS outsourcing since an HRO vendor that gets control of the HR systems infrastructure for an organization really can dicatate what's important for their clients to focus on. New offerings in technology (the aquisition of a talent management suite) can easily be rolled to their client base.
I was really dissappointed in the "lessons learned" section. I presonally think my list of lessons learned is much better. Their lesson that more due diligence and reference checking in the vendor aquisition process is clearly a vendor issue. From the 3rd party view, the major problem in HRO relationships is clearly the lack of measurable and comparable processes for a before and after standpoint.

Anyway, read the survey for yourself.

Superior Staffing Performance

2005-10-11T01:43:00.000-07:00

There was no way I was paying over $2000 for this survey, but the high level key findings were readable. If you're curious about a specific industry, then this might be for you.

There were a couple of key findings that I thought were interesting. First, the creation of a talent pool to draw off of and the ability to forecast future recruiting needs was a significant indicator of leading companies.

Second, technology is not highly utilized even though it's available. While most leading organizations use ATS of some sort, only half use automated screening of candidate profiles. The automated screening could be an automated search so the recruiter doesn't have to use key word searches manually, or they could be candidate tests (on-line) that filter for suitability. This type of pre-screening was found to lower time to fill (a requisition) by 2 days.

Leaves Administration and Absence Management

2005-10-10T06:44:00.000-07:00

I was reading the July/August copy of newsbriefs from ISCEBS and noticed a survey on absence management.

The results stated (could not find a web link to this) that only 12% of companies track the cost of absenteeism and an average cost of $260 per day of employee absneteesim.

The complete integration of absenteeism is quite difficult. Benefits, staffing, HR and payroll must share data well in order to understand the true costs. Most organizations are so lacking in this area, that absenteeism is often unknown for all associates. For example, exempt employees self manage their vacation and sick time, and their supervisors don't always monitor the accuracy of time taken. It's even worse when you have employees who work at home often and you can't manage the time actually worked.

Then take into account the vacation/sick time which is easily (I didn't say well) managed through an automated time and labor system like Kronos. Add to that disability management that Benefits is doing. Add to that the temporary and contract labor force that the staffing department is handling. And of course leaves of absence that are often tracked by HR somehow. Now it's possible that your organization has centralized the processing and tracking of each of these missed work days, but more often than not, I see a complete lack of integration when I visit organizations.

More and more, HRO vendors are trying to bundle "leaves management," absence tracking and staffing into their package of functionality. At this time however, I simply don't see any good solutions on the market, and unless you have an integrated ERP or data warehouse, its difficult to retrieve this data. This would be the ideal model considering the HR silo'd nature of absenteeism. A data warehouse and a few cognos cubes run the metrics which are them presented on the Manager Self Service portal in some sort of a metrics dashboard. Hmmm... how many of you have SAP? Perhaps Oracle Fusion will get us there as well?

Blogging Spam

2005-10-10T06:26:00.000-07:00

This is an FYI post: I have officially eliminated comments from this blog. The amount of spam comments in the last few weeks has become unmanageable.

Hewitt BPO leads the industry?

2005-10-10T05:52:00.000-07:00

While Hewitt clearly has the biggest name and the most large clients right now, I'm not so sure if they are the clear leaders as this Hewitt press release indicates.

Let's face it,

Hewitt doesn't seem to be making a great profit on this stuff yet
they are still working out the kinks in their functional processes
the Cyborg HRMS acquisition still reamains to be well integrated, but at this point, I'd suggest that Cyborg was a mistake
Hewitt can't implement any new clients due to bandwidth constraints.

In the mean time, you have many organizations starting to focus on the mid market, or they have already been there. The mid market is where the HRO companies are going to make their mark and survive or die. It's true that Hewitt has done well here, but keep an eye on ADP and Accenture.

Workday.com = Salesforce.com?

2005-10-09T18:39:00.000-07:00

Post edited on November 01, 2005. Workday.com actually contacted me about some inaccuracies in my original post.

I recently wrote about Dave Duffield and how he intends to bring workday.com to the market in the same style that salesforce.com's CRM has become a company to be reckoned with. I love "I told you so" moments, and here's one where Craig Conway has joined the Salesforce.com BOD for the next couple of years. Make your own inferences about the ties between Conway and Duffield.

Craig Conway, formerly CEO of PeopleSoft Inc., has been named to the board of directors at Salesforce.com Inc.
With the addition of Conway, the board membership at the San Francisco software maker (NYSE: CRM - News) increases to seven members; the number of independent directors on the board increases to six.

Arinso Service Center diagram

2005-10-04T07:45:00.000-07:00

Arinso has a very nice whitepaper on service centers. They segregate the strategy and the service center organizations in a very nice visual. I just thought this was a very shareable pictoral. Here it is…

IBM HR Transformation for HRO

2005-10-02T19:05:00.000-07:00

I have written about this before, but IBM has put out a nice white paper on how an organization should prepare for HRO and how to set pre/post implementation expectations. http://www-1.ibm.com/services/us/bcs/pdf/ge510-4016-hr-bto-risk-strategies.pdf

This is certainly not new news, but it’s possibly the best documented public paper I’ve seen on the topic.

The failure of most HRO engagements (measured by satisfaction – not implementation failures) is that the client organization goes in with bad expectations.

– They don’t know what is going away and what processes stay.

– They don’t know who is going away beforehand.

– They don’t understand the metrics in their current state and can’t compare themselves once in the outsourced state.

– They don’t have good internal project management.

– They don’t have good governance.

The list goes on and on.

A good consulting organization will not only do the vendor selection. If allowed to, consultants will coach the client on expectations, help them understand their current state, and assist with PM and governance. Having said that, go to a real HR consulting firm to do that work...

Work Life balance and the next generation

2005-10-02T18:41:00.000-07:00

Business Week had this article about work life balance. While it’s not in my general realm of technology, I think it has some loose lessons in terms of learning and the capabilities of the next generation. The collaborative nature and the ability to multi task are things that emerging generations will improve upon greatly. Obviously I won’t post the whole article, but it was interesting.

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_40/b3953607.htm

But maybe balance is the wrong image. Instead, think transformation. Just as businesses are shifting from Industrial Age hierarchies to collaborative networks, so, too, is the American family undergoing a parallel social revolution. Parents and children are no longer on the same schedule -- unlike the way things were a generation ago. With many educated mothers and fathers working longer hours, they are linked to their kids by a web of cell phones and e-mails

At the same time, kids are taking the initiative to pursue more activities and are using information technologies to nurture their own electronic networks of relationships, from friends at school to cousins in distant cities. "The catalyst for change has been the same in the work hemisphere and family time," says Julie Morgenstern, a time management consultant and founder of Task Masters in New York. "It's technology."

SoftScape gets thumbs up from Gartner

2005-09-29T05:14:00.000-07:00

Having gotten some (light) criticism in the past about not including SoftScape in my talent management roundup, here’s some good thoughts on them:

http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/2005/sep/1180540.htm

“Softscape, an industry leader in strategic people management technology and services, today announced that Softscape received the highest rating of "Strong Positive" in Gartner's 2005 MarketScope for Employee Performance Management (EPM) Software(1). The Gartner "Strong Positive" rating is only provided to a vendor who is considered a solid provider of strategic products, services or solutions. Gartner recommends that existing customers continue investments while potential customers consider the vendor a strong strategic choice. “

http://hrtech.blogspot.com/2005/06/talent-management-scorecard-updated.html

SAP Safe Passage

2005-09-28T22:03:00.000-07:00

http://www.sap.com/Company/Press/Press.epx?PressID=4964

SAP has been offering (and has now extended) a Safe Harbor program for PeopleSoft, JDE and Oracle customers wanting to convert off their platforms to SAP. The program has been allowing customers to access SAP technical resources.

I’m not so sure this has been as successful as they think it has been. While they have announced quite a few program participants, the majority of these were probably just organizations which were moving away from Oracle products anyway. SAP has given them free resources and promotions they otherwise would not have gotten. True, there will be some market movement due to uncertainty, but I doubt there’s much of that. Few organizations will invest the huge fixed cost to migrate when Oracle has announced their product roadmap.

Workday.com - Hidden truths and everything else I know

2005-09-15T21:47:00.000-07:00

So I've been following Dave Duffield for a while now, but have not written about him in some time. For those of you who do not know of Dave, he's the founder of PeopleSoft and has launched a new venture. He also has an incredibly loyal following among other software CEO's, but I'll talk more about that in a minute.

Here's what's going on that I can tell:

About 2 years ago, a couple of guys split from PeopleSoft to form a mid-market venture. The software they were producing would be an ASP ERP only. This company was called NetYourWork.com. NetYourWork.com is ready for release for Financials (mostly AP and Purchasing). From various sources, it seems that Dave may have seen the Oracle writing on the wall. He was already heading towards doing an ASP ERP as the future of PeopleSoft, but seeing a possible acquisition attempt, he may have wanted to keep this venture under his control. Therefore he spun it off.
Dave announces "DavesNextMove.com" at IHRIM.
DavesNextMove.com acquires NetYourWork.com
DavesNextMove.com re-brands as WorkDay.com
WorkDay.com is looking for a general release of initial software in Spring 2005. I think they will try and launch in Spring of 2006 at IHRIM. WorkDay will not have payroll in the first release. Some HR functionality should be available. However, the market will be primarily for financials first.

The business model will be Salesforce.com (CRM). They will start as a hosted (ASP) only to the small market (1000 to 5000 employees). However, as Salesforce has grown to some very large accounts, WorkDay will look to do the same.

I’m guessing that it will be about 5 years before WorkDay gets to that kind of market penetration. However, there are exPeopleSoft employees standing in line to go back to work for Dave.

Dave has an incredible network of software CEO’s that are committed to his success. He has an abundance of potential partnerships that he can use to hook up ancilliary software modules to WorkDay. Look for my next post when I’ll project what ERP’s look like in 5 years.

2006 Technoloy Outlook

2005-09-10T22:11:00.000-07:00

HR.com has a new HR Technology Outlook for 2006. As usual, I don't completely agree with their outlook. My responses in blue. It's an interesting article though.

1. HR technology software applications will continue to increase in functionality. Applications must address the changing demographics and needs of the aging workforce and the global workforce.
I actually don't see HR applications addressing this to a large extent. I do see employers becoming smarter about this topic.
2. Vendors who were in “best of breed” or application “niches” will seek to expand their offerings.
Yes - this is a current trend and will continue. The "talent" suite will get better and continue to expand.
3. Mid Market organizations will be a major target of all vendors including the traditional ERP vendors who will down market, and best of breed vendors who will seek to offer new one-stop bundled solutions.
The traditional ERP's (Oracle and SAP) will not be looking down market. SAP will not care to compete for the mid HR market, and Oracle is biding it's time until Fusion comes out. If you consider Lawson a real ERP vendor in the upper end market, then you're nicer than I am. The major HRO organizations however will be looking at mid market organizations (5-10K employees).

4. HRO as a strategy will continue in its wide acceptance, now considered a mainstream approach with clear cost benefits.
The clear cost benefits part is questionable, but over the next couple of years, HRO vendors will provide opportunities to significantly lower process costs. I think the cost benefits will be clearer in 2007.

5. HRO vendor activity such as mergers and acquisitions will level off or cease in 2006. Alliances between multiple providers, though, will continue.
There are simply too many HRO vendors. 2006 and 2007 will be major years for HRO consolidation. Profits are not stable yet and processing efficiencies have not been perfected. Until this happens, and only a few major vendors remain, the market cannot sustain having a dozen major players.

6. Organizations will increase their HR Technology spend budget for 2006/7.
Yes - this is a current trend and will continue.

7. HR executives will firmly grasp the need for performance metrics and other measurements to preserve their worth and to gain credence as a strategic business partner in organizations. Driven by that desire, HR executives will seek software applications that make such metrics user friendly and easy to calculate and present.
Yes - this is a current trend and will continue.

8. Off shore deals by companies headquartered in American companies will be limited and possibly legislated against at the state level. Although mostly pertaining to IT support, HRO with off shore support will not be readily accepted by American workers.
This is very debatable. Offshoring is already widely accepted for ITO, call center support, and HRO by the public. This trend will continue to grow.

9. Privacy and Internet communications standards such as XML consortium standards will continue to be issues and will be embraced by more organizations, especially those in a global marketplace with global structures.
Technology providers will continue embracing open web standards. This is not new.

10. “Web Services” as the next new thing or wave in technology and service delivery will emerge and make a very visible initial impact on HR software delivery.
Web services is the current wave in HR service delivery. It's been in process for several years. Employers will continue to become more strategic over the use of communication tools including the web.

And Kenexa too

2005-09-01T01:52:00.000-07:00

This is more of a surprise than Authoria (last post before this). Kenexa was voted the top RPO. While I'm not sure who the competition was, I'm betting it includes the likes of Brassring and Recruitmax. Kenexa has not (to me) shown a great depth in product functionality, breadth in their product suite, or the marketing capability and penetration into the Fortune 1000 as Authoria has. I think other vendors have put all the components of Talent Management better than Kenexa has.

My top picks for Talent Management suites are still Recruitmax and Authoria.

Authoria is Kicking Some A$$!!!

2005-09-01T01:45:00.000-07:00

I've written a lot about talent management suites and vendors in the past. However, Authoria has grown over the last few years from being the leader in knowledgebase applications to being a clear leader in overall talent management. With a clear market penetration into the Fortune 1000, great strategic partnerships with HRMS vendors and consultants, and a product that sizzles, Authoria is poised to become the TM suite to beat.

Authoria on Demand is driving new business and even though this article states over half of their business is driving from AOD, they are projecting that over 2/3rds of future sales will be on AOD. Combine this with startling growth and Authoria is in a healthy place to leverage their amazing investment in product.

Talent Acquisition Metrics

2005-08-29T01:31:00.000-07:00

Here's a PDF from Webhire. I found it interesting that manual recruiting processes and automated TAS were not significantly more different in the type and quality of the metrics they provide. In all honesty, I don't think that this survey measured the "quality" of the metrics.

For example, if we talk about measuring the cost per hire, most manual systems will miss some hard dollar costs and most soft dollar costs. However, an automated system will be able to capture these. One example being the cost of the interview - the automated TAS will measure the salary spent on the interview, whereas the manual system only recorded the cost of lunch during the interview.

I simply thought Webhire could have done a much better job "selling" their case.

More on HR Communications

2005-08-26T01:13:00.000-07:00

One of the things that bothers be about blogspot.com is that I can't have comments automatically showing up on the board - you have to click comments to see them. Most of the time, comments are innocuous enough, but sometimes they should not be buried. Here's Andrew's reply to my previous post - and some great insight and alternative perspective to my own experiences. As you all know by now, I'm an HR consultant specializing in change technology, so I'm definitely biased. Thanks Andrew.

Andrew Marritt said...

Interesting, and thanks for picking up on the conversation.

Most of my research came from the financial sector, specifically retail banking. In Europe I suspect the TP / HR.com assertion of universal self-service is not here. There are major banks, for example, employing tens of thousands and rating in the top 10 banks in the world where neither email access nor intranets are available to all employees.

I have worked within professional services & I suspect that in those organisations you see a very different world than most people. If you are not in some ways a 'high performer' in the traditional up-or-out consultancy you'll not last long.

The big issue here is whether a message is read and acted upon. The intranet or email may deliver the message but that doesn't mean that the message is acted upon. I agree with the risk of messages changing, though you can design a process to reduce this. Electronic messages are easy to bypass. Just because the message is available doesn't mean that it's going to be effective.

Finally, one factor worth considering is that you or I are obviously highly motivated to communicate via electronic channels - hence why we blog. Most people aren't like this & therefore just because I respond to electronic messages and you probably do doesn't mean we should use these channels as a primary one.

Branding, Communications, Service Delivery

2005-08-25T01:16:00.000-07:00

Perhaps the post should be "Branding, Communications, Service Delivery... Again." Actually, there have been a couple of interesting things on the web. The first is a post by Andrew who referred to another debate about communications strategy and change. In it, the debate rages on about if effective communications come from a top down approach (specifically from the direct supervisor) or from a multi-directional approach.

To be honest, Andrew takes a fairly centrist approach saying that you have to know your employee base to understand what drives them. He also applies the 80/20 rule saying that most people (average performers) don't seek out information and thus need the direct contact by their supervisor. I'll agree with this in low-tech sectors. However, in organizations that have highly sophisticated employee groups such as technology, biotech, professional services... a far higher degree of employees are highly compensated and have more sophistication in terms of data access. So Andrew is correct if we are talking about an assembly manufacturing plant, but perhaps not a biotech research firm. (Andrew - did I just say exactly the same thing you said? lol)

In these more sophisticated employee populations, I subscribe to the idea that the employer has to communicate the brand multi-directionally. The most effective is through self service and the intranet. In fact, I believe direct verbal management communications are highly ineffective in these settings. This is due to the idea that communications become unstable and inconsistent. The role and beauty of web communications is that it's delivered EXACTLY the way you planned.

This brings us to article 2. This is an HR.com article you need to log in for, but it talks about the role of self service and HR service delivery. I've hilighted a few passages

The latest HR Service Delivery Survey done by Towers Perrin suggests that “…employee self-service is nearly a universal fact in corporate America today”, and while manager self-service lags behind a bit, it “is poised for robust growth.” In addition, the survey suggests that in many cases, self-service “is becoming the only option.” A specific measure cited in the survey suggests that “In 2005, nearly two-thirds (60%) of the companies surveyed expect to provide a Web-only option for annual benefits enrollment.”

This newer and more widely accepted model for HR Service Delivery provides more direct and timelier access to users, which allows HR Departments to become more efficient, timelier and more consistent in their delivery of information, data, and transaction processing. Information can pass smoothly to those who need it and HR related transactions can proceed in an orderly approval process anytime, virtually anyplace without the necessity for one-on-one engagement. Moreover, when HR deploys web solutions for its service delivery, it shows its ability to leverage technology on par with the rest of the organization.

Oracle Fusion, and future PeopleSoft functionality

2005-08-23T01:09:00.000-07:00

Oracle Fusion has been a pretty good mystery for me. I have not heard much concrete information until lately. While I can't tell you where this information came from (other than it's not from within the organization I work for), it is very reliable.

First of all, Oracle is clearly combining JD Edwards, PeopleSoft and Oracle Suite to create Fusion. This has always been well known. I have always assumed that SCM would look like JDE, HR would look like PeopleSoft, and Financials would look like Oracle. Basically, I've heard nothing to invalidate or substantiate this.

What is interesting is their short, mid and long term visions for each product:

Short term (2006):
PeopleSoft will release V9. This is a huge surprise as I thought the current release on 8 would be the last. However, V9 allows Oracle to hang onto PeopleSoft clients for that much longer, and it creates major upgrade revenues as V8 to V9 will probably be strenuous.

Oracle will go to R12 (release 12) while JDE One and JDE World will not have any more major upgrades.

Short term functionality:
PeopleSoft HR V9 will provide a whole new talent management dashboard with hiring, turnover, performance and skills inventories for the organization. They will also be working hard to streamline and standardize workflow and approval processes. Any simplification here would be excellent. Learning management and performance management enhancements are also scheduled for V9 in 2006.

Oracle HR R12 should be interesting as one of the major components in development is a new dashboard for senior level HR practitioners (execs). This new dashboard will provide daily insight into the HR health of the organization.

JDE future functionality focuses on supply chain, and continues Oracle's focus on dashboards. This time it's in a plant manager dashboard, so I won't dwell on it.

Oracle Fusion:
Oracle has clearly stated that Fusion is the successor for all 3 product lines. This means that there will be upgrade paths from Oracle, PeopleSoft and JDE. The hope is that upgrades will be simplified, but I think we all know that Oracle will most likely struggle with maintaining clients unless the functionality is spectacular (which it promises to be). They have also clearly stated that Fusion will include the best functionality from all product lines. Lastly, I'll point out that Fusion is supposed to adhere to industry open standards.

Mid Term (2007):
Oracle Fusion will deliver more dashboards, onboarding, recruitment, learning, and workforce scheduling applications in 2007. This is just the first set of apps. Their problem is that early Fusion will not bring a cohesive HRMS to the market - in fact core HRMS is totally missing. This is in fact a good marketing strategy. If their current PeopleSoft clients buy Fusion modules, then they are more likely to upgrade to Fusion HRMS when the time comes.

Long Term (2008):
Oracle Fusion will finally bring HRMS to market in 2008. This will contain a new role based use of the application which I don't quite understand yet. It will also expand on the analytics, metrics and portal capabilities.

I'm honestly quite hopefull regarding the Oracle package. At the moment, nobody but SAP does large business enterprises well, and they desperately need a competitor. Oracle's strategy of maintaining the next PeopleSoft release (V8) and rolling out Fusion a year earlier than I thought was planned should keep the PeopleSoft masses from looking for another software vendor too soon. We'll have to wait and see.

Convergys expands BPO offering beyond HRO

2005-08-22T20:41:00.000-07:00

No, I haven't died, quit, or just gone away. I've been in the middle of parallel tests for a client and that has been an all consuming task. This also means that I haven't been doing the normal market research I usually do every week.

Convergys finalized it's deal with Deloitte to acquire the Deloitte Fiancial BPO business. With this acquisition, Cenvergys becomes a much stronger player in the overall BPO market. They are already decent sized for HRO, and this just gives them better ability to attract organizations which want a seamless platform for HR and Finance.

While I'm not sure that most large organizations will want to single-source their BPO to one vendor, this offering certainly increases Convergys' exposure and market share. It's also possible that acquiring Finance BPO from Deloitte will improve their PR outsourcing business.

eRecruitment Market Trends

2005-08-04T02:01:00.000-07:00

Thank you Gartner!!!!

One of my pet peeves over the last year has been ATS systems calling themselves talent management applications. Anyone reading my posts knows this bugs me to no end. Gartner's eRecruitment white paper clearly states a difference between Talent Acquisition Suites (TAS) and Talent Management Suites (TMS).

They state that Peopleclick, Taleo and Virtual Edge are all TAS vendors. Kenexa, Recruitmax and Workstream are all TMS vendors. Not to toot my own horn, but this matches well with my lists for ATS and TMS.

Talent Acquisition Suites/Talent Management Suites: In addition to vertical-market depth, we also expect to see more competition based on product breadth. TASs that merge e-recruitment and service procurement (that is, contingent workforce management) will be one level of differentiation. PeopleClick and VirtualEdge are good examples of vendors that provide TASs. In addition, there are vendors that are providing even broader suites of products — talent management suites — which expand into performance management, career development, succession planning, learning and compensation management. Kenexa, Recruitmax (via its acquisition of CCH/KnowledgePoint) and Workstream (through its various acquisitions, including, most recently, Kadiri) are good examples of vendors that provide broader suites of products. We believe customers prefer these integrated suites more than niche e-recruitment solutions, all else being equal. The integrated suites can leverage common capabilities, such as competency management, workflow and reporting/analytics. In addition, there are reporting and analytics, which are not easily replicated. For example, if an enterprise wanted to find a correlation between high performers and sources of talent, it would be harder to pull data from separate e-recruiting and performance management solutions than it would be from an integrated solution. Customers should understand not only how their e-recruitment vendor can support their e-recruitment requirements, but also how it will participate in the broader suite markets.

Talent Management searches are up

2005-08-03T01:44:00.000-07:00

This is actually a very poor polling technique, but it does at least show that companies are thinking about talent management. Unfortunately, I have no idea what people mean when they say talent management. To me, TM is a complete suite that runs through recruiting (talent acquisition), to learning and retention. Unfortunately, many applicant tracking systems are billed as talent management software, when they really only cover 25% of the functionality that's needed in a comprehensive suite.

Nonetheless, hr.com has a poll out there that states roughly 20% of the 150ish respondents are going to be buying a TM package this year. 70% will not and the other 10% are in between. In my opinion, 1 out of 5 companies looking for software is huge.

KPMG does not know the difference between DB and DC?

2005-08-03T01:36:00.000-07:00

Well, we all know there is a HUGE difference between accountants and actuaries. (Do I need to tell any actuary jokes?) But this press release is a rather harsh example of why a good HR consulting firm lime Mercer, Towers Perrin or Wyatt should be doing your benefits consulting and not a Big 4 firm.

The Daily Telegraph, via NewsEdge Corporation :
KPMG is one of Britain's biggest accounting firms, employed (inter alia) to audit company pension schemes, so it should surely boast the technical expertise to tell the difference between a defined contribution scheme and a defined benefit one. Yet when it came to the firm's own scheme, it needed the High Court to decide. KPMG invited the court to agree that it had been running a defined contribution scheme all these years, so that the risk should fall on the retired partners.
When the court disagreed, the firm appealed, and this week the Appeal Court threw the accountants out so comprehensively that it even refused leave to appeal to the Law Lords. The shortfall in the scheme will have to be found by the existing 553 partners, and at pounds 70m (in 2002) promises to make a nasty dent in the firm's operating profits. The very fact that there is a shortfall is a bit of a giveaway; in a defined contribution scheme, the question doesn't arise, since the nascent pensioner takes whatever the contributions have grown to, and buys his annuity. KPMG's case was that benefits were calculated without reference to earnings, but the court has disagreed. It's an important case, and a curious one.
KPMG is highly likely to be auditing your company pension (there are only three other big firms on the planet) and if they can't tell the difference between DB and DC, then it's a pretty poor lookout. In the increasingly frenzied game of pass the parcel being played between employers and employees faced with pension deficits, the small print is important. It's created lots of lucrative work for accountants, but KPMG may find the clients less inclined to appoint them in future.

Generation gap and learning

2005-08-02T07:19:00.000-07:00

I was sitting at my brother and sister-in-law’s house last night and the conversation turned to their teenage son. He was sitting in front of the computer playing some shoot and kill video game with some friends on-line. Remembering the many posts about video games and learning from other blogs, I commented that the future of work and jobs might be the ability for learning organizations to build on these new skills that don’t exist in abundance in the labor pool.

Take video gamers as an example. Last night, my nephew was sitting at a keyboard and mouse, using practically all of the keys on the keyboard for commands (often multiple keys – “S” can be shoot a gun, “ctrl-S” can be shoot a machine gun, etc…), using a mouse or joystick for some movement control, using the keyboard to control which friend he’s talking to (yelling commands to) over the microphone, and all the while toggling between views at a speed that would dizzy most of us.

My sister-in-law (a physician), commented that some studies have shown that video gamer surgeons often perform better where micro-cameras and mechanics are required – sometimes your hands just can’t get to certain places. These surgeons utilize small devices to perform miniscule operations that are no longer performed by hand or sight.

Ceridian put out a press release that doesn’t say a whole lot other than identifying differences between Gen X, Gen Y and everyone else.

For the first time in history, many organizations have workforces that comprise four distinct generations: Matures (ages 60-78), Baby Boomers (ages 41-59), Generation X (ages 28-40), and Generation Y (age 27 and younger). Matures and Baby Boomers make up well over half the American workforce. Generations X and Y comprise approximately 44 percent of the labor market, according to the Department of Labor.

To ultimately seize the opportunities of a multigenerational workforce and achieve generational competence, Ceridian encourages employers to understand and build awareness of generational differences; study how different generations interact, use products and access services within the enterprise; leverage generational understanding to identify market opportunities and to improve marketing, product development, customer service and management practices; and design projects to provide opportunities for cross-generational collaboration.

While I think it’s important to be aware of the benefits of a multi-generational workforce and the opportunities that brings, I’m much more interested in what learning organizations will do over the next decade to maximize the return on billions of dollars of video game investment.

Hyperion BI certifies on SAP Netweaver

2005-08-02T06:13:00.000-07:00

Recently I wrote about BI software and forgot to put in Hyperion. Here's a press release from Hyperion and their SAP partnership.

Hyperion's new center of excellence located at the SAP headquarters will allow them to provide SAP specific development and tighter integration. That's about all I know. :-)

State of the Industry - Portal

2005-08-01T01:08:00.000-07:00

When I talk about portals, I'm talking about an HR portal - not the enterprise portal. Portal is not synonymous with employee and manager self service - portals indicate another level of technology. Here's a good portal explanation from a vendor.

In my mind, there are only a few vendors that are providing this service. Here are my top vendors:

1) Plumtree
2) SAP
3) PeopleSoft (if you can get Oracle to sell it)
4) ADP (outsourced only)
5) WorkScape (HR only)

Plumtree and SAP offer enterprise portals, but the technology and maturity of the products give it a clear advantage over the other products. PeopleSoft can compete well, but who can buy PeopleSoft these days? For HR only portals, take a look at excellent products from ADP and WorkScape.

The candidate experience

2005-07-30T16:00:00.000-07:00

You know - sometimes I talk so much about the technology of how things work, that I feel like I'm giving the wrong imprssion of what's actually important. Andrew makes a nice point regarding the candidate experience here. Granted my blog is about the technology that drives some of these things, but the actual experience is more important that the tracking and automation of the experience.

When I was making a decision regarding my current job, I interviewed with each of the 3 major HR consulting firms (Mercer, Towers, Wyatt). In the end, I chose the one that I feld I connected with on a organizational and personal level. I also went with the one which went out of their way to let me know they wanted me. I have not regretted this decision for a second.

So I'll be the first to admit, it's usually not about the technology. But this is why I pay so much attention to the HR strategy that goes on. While I'm sitting around designing processes for people, if I'm doing it in a vaccuum without seeing the bigger picture of what the process drives, I'm a failure. That said, let's talk some more about the technology!!!

State of the Industry - HRMS

2005-07-29T01:28:00.000-07:00

As a consumer organization, this is just a terrible time to be on the market for an HRMS system. There is a huge void in the mid-range that PeopleSoft used to fill adequately. Here's my top vendors for the space:

1) SAP
2) PeopleSoft (if you can get Oracle to sell it - very rare)
3) Lawson (8.0 only - 7.x would be ranked lower)
4) ADP Enterprise (you must be willing to outsource payroll)
5) Oracle
6) Cyborg (tied)
6) Ultimate (tied)
8) Ceridian HR (once called eSource)

I know there are other vendors, but I come across these most often. I only include Cyborg because Hewitt is forcing it on all their HRO clients now. PeopleSoft is being sold rarely and only if you have lots of money to give Oracle.

The top vendor is SAP - they have the technology, functionality, full range of ERP, and one of the best portals on the market. After SAP (ignore PS for the above reasons), you have Lawson and ADP Enterprise. Lawson jumps this year with the release of 8.0 and the elimination of their COBOL processing engine. However, ADP Enterprise will get even with or leapfrog Lawson next year as their integrated portal technology matures. With ADP, Lawson and Oracle filling the mid market (2000 to 15000 employees) space right now there just are not enough good options. Oracle has always underperformed in the HR space, Lawson is not a serious ERP and ADP forces the PR outsourcing. Lawson and ADP are the better players here but simply don't have the depth to compete against SAP. If you want good ERP, go with Oracle, but HR will suck. If you want a quality vendor and service relationship, go with ADP who will also provide you with stability. Lawson is just a ho hum average player.

The bottom of the list (Cyborg, Ultimate and Ceridian) are just the players that win a few deals every now and then. They either don't have the sales force, R&D, functionality, or vendor stability to make it in the market at this moment.

Notable mention 1: I have heard very little about "Fusion." Fusion is Oracle's next ERP suite that combines the best of PeopleSoft, JD Edwards and Oracle. Personally, I think it's just going to be an integrated look and architecture for PeopleSoft HRMS, Oracle Financials, and JDE SCM. But what do I know. There is mysteriously little coming out of the Oracle camp, and usually I'd hear some whispers of what's going on. Well, we're a few years from product release anyway.

Notable mention 2: Dave Duffield (PeopleSoft founder) will be officially launching the new company shortly. It's aimed at the mid market and will be a subscription based enterprise suite, but anything from Dave is worth mentioning.

Off-topic for me - 401(k) plans

2005-07-28T13:06:00.000-07:00

Since I work for one of the major HR consulting firms, I heard this statistic and didn't believe it. Then I saw it written on BLR.com. (ok - now you know I don't work for Hewitt - and no, I don't consider them a real consulting firm anymore)

Hewitt says its study of nearly 200,000 workers who participated in their
companies' 401(k) plans found that 45 percent elected to take a cash
distribution upon leaving their jobs. The remainder either kept their savings in
their current employer's 401(k) plan (32 percent) or rolled the money over to a
qualified IRA or other retirement plan (23 percent).

Don't people realize what the huge hit in taxes and early withdrawl fees are? If people are going to cash out, just don't bother investing!!! You'd just lose money!!! (I'm not saying not to invest - just keep the cash in the retirement fund)

The technology of “Offboarding”

2005-07-28T01:13:00.000-07:00

Yup – so we’re all familiar with onboarding now. (if not, scroll down and read a bit). Terminating employees has never gotten too much press aside from COBRA, HIPAA, getting your property back and exit interviews. However, just as there are technology requirements for a seamless on-boarding process, many of these must be reversed during terminations.

Critically, employee access to buildings and access to systems must be turned off immediately. For these 2 elements, IT needs to know by the time the termination happens or very very soon after. I found this nice about.com article about IT and terminations. Most terminations are peaceful, but disgruntled employees need to be removed from having access to these systems and property asap.

HR Service Delivery, Call Centers, and Outsourcing

2005-07-26T01:28:00.000-07:00

So how does an organization actually improve HR service delivery? What is HR Service Delivery? Quite simply it’s the ability and effectiveness with which an employer delivers key services and information to employees, managers, and executives. For an employee, if I want to know if a particular treatment is covered by my medical plan, I might want to call my HR generalist, benefits outsourcer, medical insurance company, benefit specialist, HR call center, employee self service, or plan documents I have in hard copy. The ability of HR to create a cohesive, understandable, and simple environment for me to find the answer to my question is part of the HRSD is. Effective HRSD reduces the confusion that results from the many disciplines and faces of HR.

The 2 big trends in improving HRSD these days is the implementation of call center and outsourcing. We’ve probably talked about outsourcing enough, so I’d like to concentrate on call centers. First off, let me say it’s not for everyone.

Call centers are great for a number of reasons:
– Employees have 1 place to go to get answers.
– Calls are tracked until resolution
– Call center reps are trained to handle difficult situations
– Metrics on actual service delivery are easily obtainable.

For those not able to implement a call center on their own, the big 3 consultants (Mercer, Towers Perrin, Wyatt) are all experts at this stuff. If you are comfortable handing it off to an outsourcer, this is also an opportunity.

A fully centralized call center is not for everyone though. If needed, centralized call centers should be supplemented with field deployed generalists who are on-site to provide support. The level of service provided by each can be variable depending on the organizations needs.

I haven’t read this (because I don’t have the budget to pay for it), but keep in mid that when you do anything like creating a call center, outsource, or implement new software, you will not achieve the service delivery enhancements you’re looking for unless you actually consider the redesign of your processes.

Times have changed (salaries)

2005-07-25T21:50:00.000-07:00

When I got out of college, not only were starting average salaries much lower, but it was just a bad time to be looking for a job. The fact that new accounting graduates can expect to get almost $44,000 is encouraging. Cost of living has risen so dramatically that compesnation practices have lagged in the last few years. On average, salaries were up 4.2% this year. Here's the data from about.com.

Outsourcing vs. Data Privacy

2005-07-25T01:30:00.000-07:00

I stumbled across this article on data privacy and what problems outsourcers are having. My general opinion is that even with the heightened awareness we have in the U.S. about data privacy and identity theft, HR organizations have not really thought much about how their vendors treat employee data and the security measures behind it.

Most of our outsourcing relationships in the U.S. fall around 2 areas: first does the vendor comply with Sarbanes Oxley, and second, do they provide an appropriate amount of value (service vs. cost) to the relationship. Based on my experiences, most clients simply trust that employee data is going to be safe.

As more and more outsourcing goes on, clients are at greater risk. What I always find disappointing is the pure amount of denial that seems to happen. We always see surveys that say only 70-80-90% of companies outsource anything at all. This would mean that 10-20-30% of organizations think they are 100% in-house. If someone outsources payroll or benefits administration, that’s easy to see. But what about background checks, COBRA, FSA, 401(k) administration? I’d say that maybe less than 1% of the U.S. Fortune 1000 are fully in-house.

All of the above examples between payroll, benefits, background are areas where you are giving away sensitive employee data. The environment changes when you start talking about offshoring.

"The Indian BPO industry is in its infancy, and when one tends to hire 400 to
500 people every month, we often fail to scrutinize the employees closely,"
conceded Mphasis chairman Jerry Rao at a National Association of Software and
Service Companies summit in June.

Now I don’t want this to be a negative commentary on offshoring, and anyone who has been reading this blog knows that the economic advantages to offshoring are theoretically obvious. (Intro to MacroEconomics 101). What I want to bring up is the idea that most organizations simply are not focused on their vendor’s employee population, whether domestic or offshore.

The laws governing privacy and information access vary from country to
country. India makes it relatively easy to obtain information, while Japan has
strict privacy regulations. Hong Kong has a fairly strict information-protection
act, and European countries adhere to Safe Harbor regulations, which prohibit
the transfer of personal data to non-European Union nations that don't meet the
European standard for privacy protection.

Onboarding Part 3: Vendors

2005-07-24T12:29:00.000-07:00

I’ll be honest, I totally forgot I was supposed to write a part 3. Thanks to an anonymous commenter to remind me. I’m not going to do a complete review at this time, but simply highlight a few vendors that I think have excellent tools.

Vendor 1: Consulting firms. To be honest, most of the onboarding portals I’ve seen are applications that were custom created for a client. Organizations that have thought about onboarding thus far have mostly gone out and built it from the ground up. This is mostly because until very recently, onboarding applications didn’t have the market momentum to justify the cost for a software vendor to create one.

Vendor 2: Recruitmax Aloha. This has got to be the mother of all onbaording applications. You don’t have to have Recruitmas to buy this module. Single dedicated portal with rich functionality, robust API’s (read: interface capabilities), and portals for your recruiter, administrator, manager, and even your vendors!!! The successful onboarding application will deliver data, checklists, forms to your new hires and provide fulfillment functionality to the desired process owning system. If that did not make sense, basically an employee can put in basic information, and 2 hours later the network administrator has all the computer access information set up.

Vendor 3: Enboard is an onboarding only application for small and midsized companies. Without the robust portal experience above, it’s fits the needs of organizations that just want some simple self service functionality.

Vendor 4: Virtual Edge Salute. Almost every ATS vendor will have some sort of onboarding solution consisting of a portal and data interfaces. Virtual edge does a good job with workflows and multi-department collaboration.

Vendor 5: Deploy Solutions provides an onboarding module as part of it’s “talent” suite. As I mentioned above, every ATS vendor will have something, but Deploy provides a rather disappointing onbaording experience. The robustness of the portal is lacking and simply does not allow the interactivity between multiple parties that other solutions offer.

There are a lot of applications out there, and some are much better than others. Recruitmax and Virtual Edge will provide you with more functionality than you need to roll out in a phase 1 implementation. Both will provide functionality to grow into. Other onboarding applications will give you some basic functionality but may not give you enough workflow and data fulfillment to other internal business partners and vendors. If you have the money, I’d say that a custom application or Recruitmax is the way to go.

Indian HRM Quiz and other offshoring topics

2005-07-19T20:45:00.000-07:00

Mercer HR had this quiz. What do you know about Indian HRM? (4 questions only) Since we (U.S.) are so concerned (wrongly so) about the Indians and Chinese taking jobs away, perhaps we should know more about the these economies...

BTW - for the record, global economies are a great thing. 4 Question quizes are questionable.

As long as we're talking about the major insecurities that the U.S. has about offshoring work to India and China, Workforce Online has a great analysis of knowledge workers and the growth of knowledge in different economic geographies.

Cobalt’s Bangalore R&D staff has accumulated the necessary domain knowledge and now assumes full responsibility for entire projects, including the most complex work. "The more typical approach is to send low-risk work to India, but that is a recipe for failure," Krishnamurthy says.
"The talent there is as good or better than in the U.S.," he says. "The large U.S.-based companies now investing in R&D centers in India--Oracle, Intel and Microsoft, for example--do not view them as adjunct facilities but as labs for original work.

As long as we're at it, here's a Watson Wyatt survey on offshoring regarding employer and employee opinions.

Co-sourcing vs. Outsourcing

2005-07-18T20:36:00.000-07:00

Mercer published this definition and contrast of Co-sourcing versus Outsourcing on their website. I must beg to differ. While in general they are correct, the term co-sourcing has been around for a long time - probably originally coined by Mercer.

These days if you are a large employer and outsourcing part of your HR delivery, you should be approaching that outsourcing partnership with the desire to improve service delivery by some measure as opposed to simply reducing costs. This should be the objective regardless of how transactional or administrative the outsourced transaction is.

Co-sourcing is simply another buzz word that was created to help outsourcing consumers understand the impact of partnering with their outsourcing vendor. The term has outlived it's usefulness. I've heard variations from multiple vendors now including intersourcing. All of this is simply an attempt to explain the vendor relationship and allow it to evolve into a strategic partnership where both parties are trying to add value to the client organization.

Mid-market subscription based HRMS

2005-07-17T20:13:00.000-07:00

I saw a press release about Sapien providing subscription based, hosted HRMS solutions to the mid-market. They are calling it "self provisionin" which sounds like a bad marketing ploy to me, but generally, the strategy is worth looking at.

Dave's Next Move (Dave Duffield's new company) is going to be pursuing the same strategy, except at the enterprise software level. They will be doing HR, PR, finance, etc... Dave has actually renamed the company in the last week, but I forget what it is and they don't have a website yet.

Anyways, it looks like decent scaleable HRMS is coming in a subscription web delivery in the near future. (some would argue it's already here, but "decent" is the critical word)

HRO News

2005-07-14T20:28:00.000-07:00

Here's the link, but I've pasted some of the text below if you don't have a log-in:

There is a lot of proof out there that HRO and BPO are still going strong. Recent studies by The Everest Group, Workforce Magazine and others show the interest and implementation of HRO has expanded since the inception of multi-process HR outsourcing seven years ago. According to The Everest Group the number of employees covered has increased by more than 100-fold, to 3.7 million as of March 31, 2005. Additionally, competition among vendors and economies of scale have helped push down the price per employee for multi-process HR outsourcing contracts by more than a third both for large and very large companies. The survey also noted that since 2000, the total value of worldwide contracts has grown more than 250% to $12.5 billion in 2004. Not surprisingly, the more transaction-oriented the HR process, the more likely it is to be included in a multi-process HR outsourcing contract, according to the survey.

HRO Today Magazine recently released its list of the Top 21 HRO Providers. The top 21 are as follows:

Accenture HR Services
ACS Global HR Solutions
Adecco
Administaff
ADP
Advantec
Aon Consulting
ARINSO International
Ceridian
CGI Group
Checkpoint HR
Convergys
EADS
ExcellerateHRO
Fidelity Employer Services
Gevity
Hewitt Associates
IBM Global Services
Manpower
RSM McGladrey Employer Services
Xchanging

Here's my top 5 (not in Alpha order) and with no statistics to back me up:

Hewitt
Accenture
ADP
ACS
Excellerate HRO (EDS)

Wal Mart on par with Tier 1 HR Consulting Firms

2005-07-13T20:11:00.000-07:00

I feel like I've been theorizing too much. Here are a few interesting things I've seen in the news over the last couple of days:

HRMarketer.com HR Industry Trends reports the top HR industry newsmakers as Mercer, Towers Perrin, Hewitt, Watson Wyatt, and Wal Mart!!!! HAHAHAHAHA!!!! Walmart joins the ranks the tier 1 HR consulting firms by merit of it's lawsuits.

I found this article interesting because Infinium has always had such an incredible lock on casino software. Not just for HR and PR, but for casino operations systems as well. When you get into Indian gaming, you often get non-Infinium systems because the Indian casinos don't like to do the same thing as Las Vegas casinos. Since this one is in California, I think this is an Indian casino. Also, I'm really troubled by claims from Ultimate that state they have good ROI justification over service bureaus (ADP and Ceridian) in the mid-market. I don't think you can go in-house with fewer than 10,000 employees and save much money.

Technology and Cultural Effects

2005-07-13T20:05:00.000-07:00

This from Knowledge@Wharton describes the effects of technology on culture. I'm posting it to continue the discussion on work life balance that Michael Specht started.

From 1985 until the present, we have been reacting against our earlier self-centeredness by turning to networks, because according to Stone, "we believe that to be busy and to be connected is to be most alive. Now we're over-stimulated, over-wound, unfulfilled."

The cycle we are now entering is one in which we try to find ways to regain control of our attention and to satisfy our longing for a quality of life and work that allows us to connect in more direct, meaningful ways, said Stone. "The next aphrodisiac is committed, full-attention focus. Experiencing this engaged attention is to feel alive. Trusted filters, human or technical, and trusted protectors will help us remove distractions and manage boundaries, filtering signal from noise, enabling meaningful connections; these will be the tools and technologies that allow us to take our power back."

Constraining information is "precisely the role of technology that tracks our activities, aggregates it and uses the information to direct our attention," said David Sifry, CEO of Technorati, a search engine that tracks the world of weblogs. "It's a technological tap on the shoulder that saves us time. Time is the scarce resource; you've got 24 hours in a day; that's it. Attention is basically time directed to purpose."

OLAP Reporting Tools

2005-07-11T22:16:00.000-07:00

Based on our last discussion, we probably realize that the power of business intelligence lies in the ability to consolidate HR data into a unified corporate data environment. Simple data extraction and running HR metrics such as turnover, time to hire, etc are important to the HR function, but are becoming less important to the operating function. The execs at the table expect that you have a handle on your HR metrics and are working to improve your performance. They are also expecting you to provide them with quality data so they can focus on business critical issues.

In my opinion, there are only several major BI OLAP tools:
1. SAP BW
2. Oracle OLAP Option
3. Cognos Powerplay
4. Business Objects
5. Micro Strategy

In my opinion, these vendors and tools offer the broadest range and highest quality BI tools. SAP, Oracle and Cognos also represent the largest vendors for this space. If you want to expand the search for a tool, Microsoft and Crystal Decisions also offer tools, but IMO the depth is not as good.

What is Reporting?

2005-07-10T20:47:00.000-07:00

Actually, this is another one of those annoying buzz words. We’re going to call it business intelligence or BI. BI software is simply a tool that allows you to extract data out of a database. We’ll continue this discussion for a couple of posts, just like with onboarding.

For our purposes, BI tools will fall into 3 main categories.

Report or query tools embedded into database software at the application level,
Reporting tools external to database software utilizing an ODBC connection,
Analytical tools external to database using OLAP technology.

We’ll leave it there for now. We will also not going to discuss embedded “query” tools specific to a vendor or application. We’re also not going to talk about IT directed tools at the database layer.

First of all, I’d like to make my first assertion that organizations spend too much time and money on multiple disparate BI tools. Finance has one, HR has another, CRM has a third. There may be more for the ERP or whatever else is out there. Organizations that are organized will also have a data warehouse. Organizations that are advanced but not organized will have multiple data warehouses – each with its own OLAP tool.

The goal is to centralize BI. If you can centralize all of your BI into a single ODBC tool, create a data warehouse and centralized reporting out of that into single OLAP tool, all of your organizational data needs can be served out of a single platform.

That’s all for today, we’ll talk more about tools later this week.

HRMS vs. Point Solutions... again

2005-07-07T20:19:00.000-07:00

I've written a few times that the day of the huge enterprise HRMS solution is over. PeopleSoft, SAP... they just don't provide niche solutions that are as good as point solutions. So the recruiting tools in PS or SAP for example, don't compare to Virtual Edge, Recruitmax, or Taleo.

Then I think about the growth of talent suites. These suites are basically growing to encompass a large majority of HR functional requirements with the exception of core HR. Tese talent suites generally give employers the opportunity to double source vendors with one large talent suite and a core HRMS system.

However, Watson Wyatt's HR Technology Trends survey states that employers are more comfortable with multiple vendors than trying to get a vendor that does everything. The wonderful thing is that this is totally viable and possible with the good implementation of portal technologies.

Update on July 10, 2005:
Andrew wrote this about SAP eRecruit.

The tie in: Onboarding and Commitment

2005-07-07T20:12:00.000-07:00

Vertitude put out this article that addresses some of my previous posts. It's interesting to me how many people think that onboarding starts with day 1. Without some enphasis immediately after offer acceptance, you miss major opportunities to influence and shape your new hire's concept of your culture. Anyway, here's an excerpt:

The minute a new colleague walks through our doors we work hard to motivate them to stay. Our “Welcoming New Colleagues” onboarding module in our manager’s toolkit helps managers to engage new colleagues from day one. This module outlines steps that a manager needs to take to ensure a new colleague is up and running on his or her first day. There is also an online component that allows managers to find all the forms they need in a quick-click fashion.

Onboarding Part 2: Integration

2005-07-06T01:32:00.000-07:00

Let’s start this one off with a picture.

Let me first say that time also increases from left to right.

So your first step would be recruiting and all the functions in the ATS system on the left.
After that, you create an offer letter and direct the employee to the on-boarding site. This letter should probably have the hew hire’s userID and password as well. The letter may want to indicate that login cannot occur until the offer letter is returned, or whatever other contingencies need to be passed.
Keep in mind that the new hire will not be able to log in until you have actually interfaced that person’s record from the ATS over to the onboarding system. You’ll probably need to have the appropriate field indicator in the ATS for this to work well. If your organization has contingencies around background checks, education verification or whatever, make sure that all that’s done prior to the data load.
You should also give some thought to having your onboarding database be the primary data repository for your new hire data between the day of offer and day 1. This prevents you from loading data to your HRMS from 2 sources (ATS and onboarding) and minimizes any risk of conflicting data. In the onboarding system, the new hire can validate all the data prior to HRMS load (talked about later).
Once in the onboarding database, there really isn’t much need for file transfers at any specific time. It’s more as you get the data. There’s a good chance that you can transmit new hire data directly to the network people so they can set up e-mail addresses ASAP. You might also have business card data (what name the employee wants to use) a few days later, so those fields can be transmitted to the appropriate person. It doesn’t really matter what technology you are using, so long as the data gets to where it needs to go in a timely manner. XML would be nice, but not every system is going to create or receive that. So in that case other asynchronous API’s might be needed. If all else fails, just pull a report and send it off in Excel or something.
When does this go over to the HRMS? That’s actually quite a loaded question. I’ve been to companies that require the load to HRMS prior to day 1, and other places that have a high enough no-show rate that they don’t want anyone in there until they show up for work. This will be a tactical decision on your part, but my guess is that most companies can load data into their HRMS at least a few days prior to day 1. Keep in mind that once the core employee record is set up in HRMS, you can load any other data piecemeal. So if the employee sets up direct deposit preferences late, the interface will just refresh and capture latest changes.

For Part 3 (Systems and Vendors) I need to do a bit of research, so give me a couple days.

Onboarding Part 1: Definition

2005-07-05T01:00:00.000-07:00

OK – So I’ve decided that it’s time for a new topic other than employee engagement. Since Andrew has so kindly thought one up for me, I figure we’ll do something around on-boarding. In the next few days, I’ll be doing a 3 part series on the topic. I'm hoping this will also result in some good discussion in the blogs.
– Onboarding Definition
– Onboarding Integration
– Onboarding Systems and Vendors

So what is onboarding? First of all, it’s one of these annoying buzz words we have in HR these days. It is an important one though, and the practice has initiated all sorts of new tactics for recruiting and retention. Onboarding is the process of integrating employees into their new work environment. While this sounds simple, it really take a multitude of coordinated acts to accomplish this.

Timing: In my opinion, onboarding begins with the offer letter. Many people think that onboarding happens on day one with the orientation, but if you wait this long, you have missed several golden opportunities to shape your new employee’s view about you. From here on out – I’m going to just call these people “new hires.”

Goals: You have a precious few weeks to make sure your employee remains excited about their new opportunity. The misuse of these weeks could lead to the employee going after another offer, getting counter offers from the current employer, or just status quo (lack of heightened excitement). Similarly, you have a precious few weeks after the first day to make sure your employee gets off to the right start.

Pre-day 1 activities: The days between the offer letter and first day of work should be a pointed and disciplined flow of information both ways.

Coming from the employee, you want some core data about the employee. They can fill out all the paperwork so you are not spending 2 hours during the first day getting signatures. These new hires can go to a secured website and electronically fill out and sign the necessary forms, or they can print these forms out and bring them in on day 1. I’m talking about your non-compete forms, standards of conduct, W-2’s, direct deposits, etc… If you are really cool, you might even have a form so business cards can be pre-ordered. If you measure offer to day 1 retention rates, this is a huge impact. Can you imagine showing a future employee a mock-up of their business card on-line 2 weeks before their start date? And the network forms for day 1 connectivity and e-mail? Do that one too.
Disclaimer: I should note that I’m not a lawyer, so I offer no judgement, but some companies have questioned whether they can ask their hew hires to “work” without paying them. It’s just something to consider. Most new hires would happily do this work.
Coming from you, the employer, are all the standard day 1 communications, but in a pre-day 1 form. That website you directed them to with all the forms? It’s also going to have related communications. You can’t ask them to sign the standards of conduct form if they have not read it. You might have recent positive press releases, the employee handbook, profiles of successful employees, and materials that reinforce the employer’s brand. If the employee is sufficiently excited about you, they are going to read this stuff. And while you are keeping them excited about you, they are less likely to be looking elsewhere.

Post day 1 activities: Most of this is coming from the employer, but of course it’s almost all collaborative. Having the website up does not exempt you from running orientation. You still have to do that. However, you should now have a day 1, month 1, quarter 1, and year 1 goal. Here are some ideas:

D 1: Orientation. Not just filling out paper orientation, but a real one where you have trained people integrating new hires into your brand (I’m hoping Regina has more to say about this). After or along with orientation, pass out those business cards we mentioned before. Hey, you collected the data, why not get them early? If you have salespeople who you want to get on the street immediately, can you imagine their reaction to that? Phone and computers or laptops. I have been employed by enough companies who made me wait 2 or 3 weeks before I got my laptop. Hey – If you want to pay me $#### a day to do nothing for a couple weeks, I’m game for that… Get these poor guys hooked up for day 1. Once again, we had the data, so let’s execute on it. Nothing sucks more than being a new employee, being excited about the opportunity, and then sitting at your desk reading company brochures because you have no e-mail, no computer, and no phone!!!!
M 1: The new hire’s manager should be well prepared to go through all the job and performance standards. This should be a proactive session letting the new hire know what’s expected, but also quite a bit of setting goals as well. M1 should also contain quite a bit of training, or whatever type of company integration you do (mentorships, coursework, etc…). Also don’t forget to check on the benefits. Not getting benefits right on the first try leaves a nasty feeling for new hires.
Q 1: Is really the same as M1, but I leave it here to remind you that as part of the onboarding plan, you really have to formalize the follow-up processes. So follow up on the performance and job expectations, and continue the training.
Y 1: If everything has gone according to plan, you should have much better retention rates in year 1 and hopefully your employee engagement is inching up slightly. Employees will better understand their working conditions with a well thought out plan to get them integrated into the company, and you should reap healthy rewards from it.

Next time we talk about integration and how you get all the required systems to work together.

Telecommuters make many office visits

2005-07-04T19:06:00.000-07:00

As a quick follow-up to Michael's work life balance post, I recently saw this article on telecommuting and how telecommuters still go into the office more often than they think they will. Personally, I love tellecommuting even though it impedes my ability to relax :-)

This article basically says that the world may not be ready for full on telecommuting yet. Even those who could telecommute 100% of the time wind up in the office a couple times a week.

"On the days I work from home, I get to relax and be more focused," said Wheeling, a Hewlett-Packard project manager who lives in the foothills town of Rough and Ready. "But the rest of the week I get to socialize."
It's a pattern captured in nationwide statistics. About 24 million Americans worked from home during at least one business day a month in 2004, up from 11.6 million in 1997, according to ITAC, an association that promotes alternative work locations.
"If you're the only person telecommuting, your life is hard and lonely. As more people telecommute, the communications channels shift, and then the people
at the offices all want to work at home," said Roitz, who said about one-third of AT&T's salaried employees telecommute full time. They are, however, urged
to meet face-to-face with their managers at least twice a year.

Recruiting to Onboarding

2005-07-01T22:16:00.000-07:00

Andrew has a very nice write-up on measuring the recruitment experience through the entire recruiting experience and then the first year of employment.

One of the other new buzwords besides "talent" is "onboarding." Onboarding is not only the new hire experience. It is everything that happens from the moment an offer letter is extended to the time your emplyoee is sufficiently indoctrinated into the organization and is competently productive. In other words, Andrew is correct when he says "the candidate’s understanding of you changes throughout the process (a very strong indicator of how likely they are to integrate when they join)" To create a successful recruiting experience in the eyes of the organization, the employee must be retained. Therefore, it is critical that the organization view the recruiting experience to last longer than day 1.

Onboarding should consist of the

pre day 1 activities (preferably some sort of on-line pre-hire transfer of knowledge, policies and information),
new hire process (how quickly do you get the employee the tools needed to work and how well do you orient him/er)
Post day 1 activities (how do you continue to aclimate the employee in the first few months)
post M1 and Q1 activities (how well do you begin the process for career development and job training)

Organizations should easily find that there is large ROI associated with quality onboarding primarily through decreased turnover in the first 18 months. I think I wrote about this once before, but you should remember that no ROI is useful unless you have first measured the current state benchmark to compare future results with. So as Andrw says "You should be looking at measuring at all stages, right into their first year. You need to track the changes over time."

Talent Management Scorecard updated

2005-06-30T07:30:00.000-07:00

Here's my original post. I have updated Authoria and included Softscape.

So an integrated point solution in the talent space should/may include (1) talent acquisition, (2) new hire onboarding, (3) performance management, (4) compensation management, (5) learning management, (6) succession planning, (7) analytics, (8) ESS, and (9) MSS. This is probably not a complete list. Here’s how they stack up:

Kenexa: 1, 3, 7, 8, 9
Recruitmax: 1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 8, 9
Authoria: 1, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9
Workstream: 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9
Softscape: 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9